Staff Profile
Dr Ruth Lee
Senior Lecturer, Psychology
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I am a developmental psychologist. My first degree was in Russian Studies (University of Sheffield, 1995), and I worked in education, information, and research in the public sector for some time before becoming interested in psychology. I completed an MEd 'conversion course' in Psychology of Education at the University of Manchester in 2008, and received my PhD from the University of Toronto in 2018. I held postdoctoral posts at Queen's University Belfast and the University of York between 2018 and 2021, before returning to Queen's University Belfast as a Lecturer in Education at the School of Psychology in 2021. I joined York St John in 2022.
- School – School of Education, Language and Psychology
- Email – r.lee@yorksj.ac.uk
- Phone – 01904 876 203
- Research - View my work in RaY
- Postgraduate Research Supervisor
Teaching
I teach on:
- PSY4002 Cognition
- PSY300M Child Development
- PSY4008M Survey Research Methods
- PSY5006 Investigating Cognition
Research
I am interested in how conceptual, linguistic, and cognitive factors interact to shape the information that people take from language, including the way it is processed in real time as sentences unfold, and how this develops between childhood and adulthood. I am also interested in children’s and adults’ temporal cognition, and in the ways that people think about what psychology is and what it can and cannot explain.
Professional activities
I am a member of the Cognitive Science Society and the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology.
Publications
Journal articles
Over, H., Lee, R., Flavell, J., Vestner, T., & Cook, R. (in press). Contextual modulation of appearance-trait learning. Cognition.
Nyhout, A. & Lee, R. (in press). Young children are not driven to explore imaginary worlds: A commentary on Dubourg & Baumard. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Lee, R., Shardlow, J., O’Connor, P.A., Hoerl, C., Fernandes, A.S., & McCormack, T. (2022). Toward an account of intuitive time. Cognitive Science, 46(7), e13166.
Lee, R., Chambers, C. G., Huettig, F., & Ganea, P. A. (2022). Children’s and adults’ use of fictional discourse and semantic knowledge for prediction in language processing. PloS One, 17(4), e0267297.
Lee, R., Shardlow, J., O’Connor, P.A., Hotson, L., Hotson, R., Hoerl, C. & McCormack, T. (2022). Past-future preferences for hedonic goods and the utility of experiential memories. Philosophical Psychology, 1-31, advance online publication.
Lee, R., Flavell, J., Tipper, S., Cook, R., & Over, H. (2021). Spontaneous first impressions emerge from brief training. Scientific Reports, 11 (1), 1-13.
Lee, R., Hoerl, C., Burns, P., O’Connor, P.A., Fernandes, A.S., & McCormack, T. (2020). Pain in the past and pleasure in the future: the development of past-future preferences for hedonic goods. Cognitive Science, 44(9), e12887.
Shardlow, J., Lee, R., Hoerl, C., McCormack, T., Burns, P., & Fernandes, A. S. (2020). Exploring people’s beliefs about the experience of time. Synthese, 198, 1-23.
Lee, R., Chambers, C.G., Huettig, F., & Ganea, P.A. (2017). Children’s semantic and world knowledge overrides fictional information during anticipatory language processing. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Beck, A., & Lee, R. (2002). Attitudes to corruption amongst Russian police officers and trainees. Crime, Law and Social Change, 38(4), 357-372.
Book chapters
Lee, R. & McCormack, T. (2022). A developmental perspective on temporal asymmetries. In C. Hoerl, T. McCormack, & A. Fernandes (Eds.), pp. 155-181. Temporal Asymmetries in Philosophy and Psychology. OUP.
Conferences
Conference and workshop talks
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2022 |
Lee, R., Shardlow, J., O’Connor, P.A., Hoerl, C., Fernandes, A.S., & McCormack, T. (2022, February). Towards an account of intuitive time. Paper presented at the Experimental Philosophy (X-PHI) Workshop, Norwich, UK. |
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2021 |
Lee, R., Shardlow, J., O’Connor, P.A., Hoerl, C., Fernandes, A.S., & McCormack, T. (2021, September). Towards an account of intuitive time. Paper presented at the virtual 28th conference of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Leipzig, Germany. |
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2021 |
Shardlow, J., Lee, R., McCormack, T., O’Connor, P.A., Hotson, L., Hotson, R., & Hoerl, C. Past-future preferences for hedonic goods and the utility of experiential memories. Paper presented at the virtual 28th conference of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Leipzig, Germany. |
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2019 |
Lee, R., Shardlow, J., McCormack, T., Fernandes, A.S., Burns, P., & Hoerl, C. (2019, September). The phenomenology of time and temporal passage. Paper presented at the 27th conference of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Athens, Greece. |
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2019 |
Lee, R., McCormack, T., Fernandes, A.S., Burns, P., O’Connor, P., & Hoerl, C. (2019, January). Beliefs about and phenomenology of the flow of time. Paper presented at the Flow of Time workshop (AHRC), Venice, Italy. |
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2018 |
Lee, R., McCormack, T., Burns, P., O’Connor, P., Fernandes, A.S., & Hoerl, C. (2018, September). The development of a past-future value asymmetry for hedonic goods. Paper presented at the 26th conference of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Rijeka, Croatia. |
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2018 |
Burns, P., McCormack, T., & Lee, R. (2018, February). A developmental perspective on temporal asymmetries. Paper presented at the Temporal Asymmetries workshop (AHRC), Warwick, UK. |
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2017 |
Lee, R., Chambers, C.G., Huettig, F., & Ganea, P.A. (2017, July). Children’s semantic and world knowledge overrides fictional information during anticipatory language processing. Paper presented at the 39th meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, London, UK. |
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2016 |
Lee, R. & Ganea, P.A. (2016, July). Sticking to your story: children’s linguistic processing of narratives that contradict world knowledge. Paper presented at the Society for Text and Discourse, Kassel, Germany. |
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2014 |
Lee, R. & Ganea, P.A. (2014, May). What are you implying? Children’s inferences from implicit information in narratives. Paper presented at Development 2014, Ottawa, Ontario. |
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2001 |
Beck, A. & Lee, R. (2001, October). Perceptions de la corruption au sein de la police russe: résultats d’une enquête sociologique. Paper presented at Corruptions et déontologies, Institut des Hautes Études de la Sécurité Intérieure, Paris, France. |
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2000 |
Lee, R. & Beck, A. (2000, September). Understanding Attitudes to Corruption in the Russian Police. Paper presented at the Third Biennial International Conference ‘Policing in Central and Eastern Europe: Ethics, Integrity, and Human Rights’, Ljubljana, Slovenia. |
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1999 |
Beck, A. & Lee, R. (1999, October). Policing ethnic minorities: victims and offenders in the UK and Russia. Paper presented at Policing the 21st Century: Continuity or Change? Omsk Law Academy, Omsk, Russia. |
Conference posters
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2021 |
O’Connor, P.A. & Lee, R. Students' Experiences of Remote Learning in Undergraduate Psychology. Poster presented at the virtual British Psychological Society Division of Academics, Researchers & Teachers in Psychology Annual Conference |
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2019 |
McCormack, T., Lee, R., Fernandes, A., Burns, P., O’Connor, P.A., & Hoerl, C. The development of past-future asymmetries in preferences about pleasant and unpleasant events. Poster presented at the 2019 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, MD. |
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2018 |
Lee, R., Chambers, C.G., & Ganea, P.A. (2018, January). Children prioritize prior background knowledge over story information during real-time linguistic processing. Poster presented at the Eighth Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development, Budapest, Hungary. |
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2017 |
Lee, R., Chambers, C.G., & Ganea, P.A. (2017, November). Generic language diminishes children’s reliance on novel discourse information about familiar fantastical characters. Poster presented at the 42nd meeting of the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA. |
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2017 |
Lee, R., Herman, J., Nishat, F. & Peskin, J. (2017, June). Strategies for interpreting fiction in high functioning autism and typical development. Poster presented at the 2017 Canadian Psychological Association Convention, Toronto, ON. |
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2017 |
Lee, R. & Ganea, P.A. (2017, April). Children’s semantic and world knowledge overrides fictional information during linguistic processing. Poster presented at the 2017 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Austin, TX. |
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2016 |
Lee, R., Huettig, F., & Ganea, P.A. (2016, January). A likely story: the influence of fantastical discourse context on children’s on-line sentence comprehension. Poster presented at the Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development, Budapest, Hungary. |
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2015 |
Lee, R., Strouse, G.A., Verdine, B.N., O'Doherty, K. & Troseth, G.L. (2015, June). Young Children's Symbolic Media Environments: a Latent Class Analysis. Poster presented at the 45th meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, Toronto, Ontario. |
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2015 |
Lee, R. & Ganea, P.A. (2015, March). Must I Draw you a Picture? Children's Mental Manipulation of Implicit Information. Poster presented at the 2015 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Pennsylvania, PA. |
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2013 |
Lee, R. & Ganea, P.A. (2013, October). Looking ahead: Children’s inferences from picture books. Poster presentation at the Eighth Biennial Meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, Memphis, TN. |
