Staff Profile
Dr Emma Tecwyn
Senior Lecturer, Subject Area Research Lead (Psychology), Programme Lead (Psychology Master's programmes)
I am a Senior Lecturer in Psychology, with a background spanning psychology, animal behaviour and biological sciences.
I completed my PhD at the University of Birmingham in 2014, where I investigated the ability of great apes and children to plan their actions in problem -solving tasks. Following this I held postdoctoral research positions in developmental and comparative psychology at Cardiff University, the University of Toronto, and the Unversity of St Andrews. Prior to joining York St John University in 2022 I spent 3 years as a Lecturer in Psychology at Birmingham City University.
- School – School of Education, Language and Psychology
- Email – e.tecwyn@yorksj.ac.uk
- Research - View my work in RaY
- Postgraduate Research Supervisor
Further information
Teaching
I currently teach on the following modules:
- PSY4013M: Biological Basis of Behaviour
- PSY4016M: Cognition and Development
- PSY5002M: Infant and Child Development (Module Leader)
- PSY6034M: Origins of the Human Mind (Module Leader)
I also supervise student research projects/dissertations 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.
Some current areas of interest include:
Mental simulation in problem-solving: To what extent do children use mental simulation as a problem solving strategy, particularly when having to choose between alternative options? Are individual differences in executive functions predictive of children's tendency to simulate? (Funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant, 2021-2024)
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 and overimitation: What cognitive mechansims underpin the development of children's tendency to faithfully copy even unnecessary actions (overimitation)? Why do social cues increase overimitation?
I have a keen interest in the Open Science movement and strive to make my research practices transparent and reproducible, via pre-registration of 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 43rd 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 42nd 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.
- Member of the Experimental Psychology Society.
- Member of the Cognitive Science 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, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
- Conference peer reviewer: Cognitive Science Society Annual Meeting, Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development.