[Email: p.silverstein@lancaster.ac.uk]
[Twitter @priyasilverst]
I am a PhD student at Lancaster University, studying how ostensive-referential cues affect infant attention, memory, and information transmission. I study infants from 6 months to 2 years old, using behavioural and eye-tracking methods. I am particularly interested in disentangling high- and low-level interpretations of infant behaviour. I am committed to open science practices, and part of the department's Prospr group [http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/research/open-science/].
Before coming to Lancaster, I completed my undergraduate and master’s degrees at Aston University (studying psychology and then cognitive neuroscience). I also worked as a research assistant at the University of Warwick Communication Development Lab.
In my downtime, I love exploring the Lancashire countryside with my wife, reading, and binge-watching trashy TV on Netflix.
PhD research:
The effect of ostensive-referential cues on infant memory
I use eye-tracking with 9-month-olds to investigate infant attention to communicative and non-communicative scenes. This paper has been accepted at Infant Behavior and Development for a special issue on 'Replication, Collaboration, and Best Practices in Infancy Research' and can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638318301474
The effect of ostensive-referential cues on infant attention
I use eye-tracking with 6- to 18-month-olds to investigate infant gaze-following ability. This research is currently in progress, and the project can be found here: https://osf.io/fqp8z/
The effect of ostensive cues on information transmission
I use behavioural methods with 2-year-olds to investigate which information they choose to transmit to a naive adult, based on whether they have learnt these actions with or without ostensive cues.
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Collaborations:
Gesture differences when talking about defeat and victory
I have an ongoing collaboration with Prof. Sotaro Kita at the University of Warwick (originally funded by an Experimental Psychology Society undergraduate research bursary). This is an exploratory study investigating differences in gesture production when talking about experiences of defeat and victory in adults.
Factors affecting word production
I have an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Cristina Romani at Aston University (originally my MSc Cognitive Psychology dissertation). This project looks at factors affecting onset and duration reaction times for producing known words. This project is part of a larger project studying the same factors affecting people with aphasia.
I have previously been a GTA for 102 - Psychology Experiments and 205 - Developmental Psychology.
MSc Cognitive Neuroscience - Distinction (Aston University)
BSc Psychology with Integrative Placement - 2:1 (Aston University)
[Email: p.silverstein@lancaster.ac.uk]
[Twitter @priyasilverst]
