Dr Emma Tecwyn

Teaching

I currently teach on the following modules:

• PSY5002M: Infant and Child Development (Module Lead)
• PSY6034M: Origins of the Human Mind (Module Lead)

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 as well as computer-based tasks and eye-tracking. I 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, and Experimental Psychology Society Small Grant 2025-2026).

Social and causal reasoning: What cognitive mechanisms underpin the development of children's tendency to faithfully copy even unnecessary actions (overimitation)? Why do social cues increase overimitation? Do young children grasp that sequences of actions can be causal?

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

Publications

For an up-to-date list of publications see my Google Scholar page.

Buchsbaum, D., Tecwyn, E.C., Whalen, A., Felsche, E., Messer, E.J.E., Griffiths, T., Gopnik, A., Seed, A.M. (2025) Children, but not capuchins, rationally integrate social and physical information when deciding which actions to copy. PsyArXiv https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/8yah3_v1  

White, L. L., Tecwyn, E.C., & Petty, S. (2024). Experiences of loneliness and connection for autistic young people: a systematic review. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-024-00487-6

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

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.

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., 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

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

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

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

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

Selected Recent Presentations

Tecwyn, E.C. (Jan 2026) Thinking ahead: The development of mental simulation as a problem-solving strategy. Invited speaker for department colloquium at the Department for Comparative Cross-cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany)

Tecwyn, E.C. (Sept 2025). ‘Species-Fair’ Design & Open Methods in Comparative Cognition. Invited speaker and panel member for ManyManys Big Team Science project international webinar (online)

Tecwyn, E.C. & Nyhout, A. (Jan, 2025). Do children use mental simulation to solve problems with multiple alternatives? Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development (Budapest, Hungary)

Tecwyn, E.C., Mahbub, N., Kazi, N., Gatesy-Davis, A. & Buchsbaum, D. (Jan, 2025). The development of observational learning of causal action sequences in 1- to 5-year-olds. Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development (Budapest, Hungary)

Professional activities

• Fellow of the Higher Education Authority (FHEA)
• Member of the Economic and Social Research Council Peer Review College
• External Examiner for MSc Family & Child Psychology, University of Chester
• External Examiner for PhD Theses (University of Queensland, Australia; University of St Andrews, UK)
• 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, Cognitiv
• Development, Current Biology, Current Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Journal of Comparative Psychology, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, PeerJ, Scientific Reports
• Conference peer reviewer: Cognitive Science Society Annual Meeting, Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development.