Dr Emma Tecwyn

Teaching

I currently teach on the following modules:

PSY4003M - Biological Basis of Behaviour
PSY4006M - Foundations of Human Development
PSY5002M - Infant and Child Behaviour (Module Leader)
PSY5005M - Advanced Topics in Brain and Behaviour (Module Leader)
PSY7001M - Psychological Research Methods
PSY7002M - Research Paper

I also supervise student research projects at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Research

I'm interested in the developmental and evolutionary origins of cognitive abilities - particularly those implicated in problem solving. My research spans the fields of developmental, comparative and cognitive psychology. I use behavioural experiments that involve individuals interacting with physical puzzles or computer-based tasks and have investigated a range of cognitive abilities in diverse groups, including planning in orangutans, intuitive statistics in capuchin monkeys, grasp of gravity in dogs, and experience of time in children.

I am currently Principal Investigator of a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant which aims to investigate the development of mental simulation as a problem solving strategy in 4- to 7-year-old children, and examine whether individual differences in executive functions predict children's tendency to simulate.

Some other current areas of interest include:

- Causal reasoning: What cues do children use to infer cause-effect relations and how does this change across development? Do young children grasp that sequences of actions can be causal?

- Social reasoning: What cognitive mechansims underpin the development of 'overimitation'? Do young children interpret ostensive cues as indicative of pedagogical intent?

I have a keen interest in the Open Science movement and strive to make my research practices transparent and reproducible, via pre-registration of experimental studies, open sharing of data and analysis code, and posting of preprints for timely dissemination.

Publications and conferences

Journal articles

Tecwyn, E. C., Mazumder, P., & Buchsbaum, D. (2023). One-and two-year-olds grasp that causes must precede their effects. Developmental Psychology, 59(8), 1519-1531.

Bechlivanidis, C., Buehner, M. J., Tecwyn, E.C., Lagnado, D. A., Hoerl, C., & McCormack, T. (2022) Human Vision Reconstructs Time to Satisfy Causal Constraints. Psychological Science, 33(2), 224-235

Espinosa, J., Tecwyn, E.C., & Buchsbaum, D. (2022) Searching high and low: Domestic dogs’ understanding of solidity. Animal Cognition, 25(3), 555-570

Tecwyn, E.C. (2021) Doing Reliable Research in Comparative Psychology: Challenges and Proposed Solutions. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 135(3), 291–301

Pelgrim, M., Espinosa, J., Tecwyn, E.C., Marton-MacKay, S., Johnston, A., & Buchsbaum, D. (2021) What’s the Point? Domestic Dogs’ Sensitivity to the Accuracy of Human Informants. Animal Cognition, 24, 281–297

Lorimer, S., McCormack, T., Blakey, E., Lagnado, D.A., Hoerl, C., Tecwyn, E.C. & Buehner, M.J. (2020). The Developmental Profile of Temporal Binding: From Childhood to Adulthood. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73(10), 1575-1586

Tecwyn, E. C., Bechlivanidis, C., McCormack, T., Lagnado, D., Lorimer, S., Blakey, E., Hoerl, C. & Buehner, M.J. (2020) Causality influences children’s and adults’ experience of temporal order. Developmental Psychology, 56(4), 739-755

Hoerl, C., Lorimer, S., McCormack, T. Lagnado, D.A., Blakey, E., Tecwyn, E.C. & Buehner, M.J. (2020). Temporal binding, causation, and agency: Developing a new theoretical framework. Cognitive Science, e12843

Tecwyn, E.C., & Buchsbaum, D. (2019). What factors really influence domestic dogs’ (Canis familiaris) search for an item dropped down a diagonal tube? The tubes task revisited. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 133(1), 4-19

Blakey, E.*, Tecwyn, E.C.*, McCormack, T., Lagnado, D.A., Hoerl, C., Lorimer, S. & Buehner, M.J. (2019) When causality shapes experience of time: Evidence for temporal binding in young children. Developmental Science, 22(3), e12769 * Equal contribution

Tecwyn, E.C., Denison, S., Messer, E.J.E. & Buchsbaum, D. (2017) Intuitive probabilistic inference in capuchin monkeys. Animal Cognition, 20, 243-256

Tecwyn, E.C., Thorpe, S.K.S., Chappell, J. (2014) Development of planning in 4- to 10-year-old children: reducing inhibitory demands does not improve performance. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 12, 85-101

Tecwyn, E.C., Thorpe, S.K.S., Chappell, J. (2013) Great apes can plan step-by-step but not in advance of action. Behavioural Processes, 100, 174-184

Tecwyn, E.C., Thorpe, S.K.S., Chappell, J. (2012) What cognitive strategies do orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) use to solve a trial-unique puzzle-tube task incorporating multiple obstacles? Animal Cognition, 15, 121-133

Peer-reviewed conference proceedings

Tecwyn, E. C., Mahbub, N., Kazi, N., & Buchsbaum, D.  (2021) Can 1- and 2-year-old toddlers learn causal action sequences? Proceedings of the 43^rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society

Tecwyn, E. C., Seed, A. M. & Buchsbaum, D. (2020) Sensitivity to Ostension is Not Sufficient for Pedagogical Reasoning by Toddlers. Proceedings of the 42^nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society

Book chapters

Tecwyn, E.C. & Buchsbaum, D. (2018) Hood’s Gravity Rules. In Vonk, J. & Shackleford, T. (Eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer

Chappell, J., Cutting, N., Tecwyn, E.C., Apperly, I., Beck, S.R., Thorpe, S.K.S. (2015) Minding the gap: a comparative approach to studying the origins of innovation. In Kaufmann, A. & Kaufmann, J.C. (Eds) Animal Creativity and Innovation. Academic Press

Professional activities

- Fellow of the Higher Education Authority (FHEA)

- External Examiner for MSc Family & Child Psychology, University of Chester

- Editorial Board Member: Psychological Science

- Member of the Experimental Psychology Society

- Ad hoc journal reviewer: American Journal of Primatology, Animal Behavior and Cognition, Animal Cognition, Behavioural Processes, Biology Letters, Cognition, Cognitive Development, Current Biology, Developmental Psychology, Journal of Comparative Psychology

- Conference peer reviewer: Cognitive Science Society Annual Meeting, Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development