Dr Justyna Needham

More about me

I completed 5 years of Clinical Psychology (MA) training, with specialisation in personality disorders and spent 5 following years working in a psychiatric unit. I also completed a MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience and gained a PhD in Psychology from University of York.

My main areas of interest are centred around learning and memory and the way these two cognitive processes can be optimised. I am also interested in how different brain states (i.e. sleep versus wake) can modulate learning and memory consolidation. My recent interests involve benefits of quiet wakefulness in consolidation of newly learnt skills and knowledge and its clinical applications.

Journal Publications

• Sobczak, J. M., & Gaskell, M. G. (2019). Implicit versus explicit mechanisms of vocabulary learning and consolidation. Journal of Memory and Language, 106, 1-17. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2019.01.003
• Cairney, S.A., Sobczak, J.M., Lindsay, S., Gaskell, M.G (2017). Mechanisms of memory retrieval in slow-wave sleep. Sleep 40 (9).
• Cairney, S.A., Lindsay, S., Sobczak, J.M., Paller, K.A., Gaskell, M.G. (2016). The benefits of targeted memory reactivation for consolidation in sleep are contingent on memory accuracy and direct cue-memory associations. Sleep, 39, 1139-1150.
• Cairney, S.A., Ashton, J.E., Roshchupkina, A.A., Sobczak, J.M. (2015). A dual role for sleep spindles in sleep-dependent memory consolidation? The Journal of Neuroscience, 35, 12328-12330.

Conference Papers and Presentations

• Sobczak., J.M., Cairney, S.A., Gaskell, M.G. (January, 2017). Influence of targeted memory reactivation in sleep on novel words learning. Poster session presented at the Events in Memory workshop, University of York, York, UK.
• Sobczak., J.M., Gaskell, M.G. (January, 2017). Comparing training procedures in novel word learning: implicit versus explicit training tasks. Paper presented at the EPS meeting in London, UK
• Sobczak, J.M., Cairney, S.A., Lindsay, S., Gaskell, G.M. (November, 2015) Targeted memory reactivation: the effects of cue type and acoustic match. Paper presented at the 7th World Congress of the WSF, Istanbul, Turkey.
• Sobczak., J.M., Gaskell, M.G. (June, 2015). Comparing training procedures in novel word learning: implicit versus explicit training tasks. Poster session presented at the New Directions in Implicit and Explicit Language Learning Workshop, Lancaster University, UK.