Staff Profile
Dr Ruth Lee
Senior Lecturer
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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 – 01904876771
- Research - View my work in RaY
- Postgraduate Research Supervisor
Further information
Teaching
I teach on:
- PSY4016M Cognition and Development
- PSY4017M Psychology at Work
- PSY4018M Foundations of Research 2
- PSY5006M Investigating Cognition
- PSY5008M Psychology in Practice
- PSY6001 Research Paper (undergraduate dissertation)
- PSY7003M Child Development
- PSY7002M Research Paper (MSc dissertation)
Research
I currently have several areas of interest:
1. I am interested in children’s and adults’ temporal cognition, and in particular in how much (dis)utility people assign to having memories of painful and pleasurable events, as distinct from living through them. This work has been conducted with Profs. Teresa McCormack at Queen's University Belfast and Prof. Christoph Hoerl at the University of Warwick, and with Dr Jack Shardlow at the University of Edinburgh.
2. With Dr Gabrielle Strouse at the University of South Dakota, I have started to develop work on creating and validating a measure of closeness between preschool children and the adults in their lives who are not their parents. We are currently focusing on grandparents; we hope this work will be useful in researching the ways in which bonds between grandchildren and their grandparents can be developed and supported via video chat.
3. In work with Prof. Patricia Ganea and Prof. Craig Chambers at the University of Toronto, I have also examined how conceptual, linguistic, and cognitive factors interact to shape the information that children and adults take from language in real time as sentences unfold.
Professional activities
I am an external examiner at Leeds Beckett University for the MSc Psychology conversion award.
Publications
Journal articles
Over, H., Lee, R., Flavell, J., Vestner, T., & Cook, R. (2023). Contextual modulation of appearance-trait learning. Cognition, 230, 105288.
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.
Nyhout, A. & Lee, R. (2022). Young children are not driven to explore imaginary worlds: A commentary on Dubourg & Baumard. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, e291.
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 35(8), 1181-1211.
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.
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
Shardlow, J., & Lee, R. (2024, forthcoming). The folk concept of time. In N. Emery (Ed.), Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Time. Routledge.
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
Talks and conference presentations
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Fayter, D., Cutting, N., Mirkovic, J., & Lee, R. (2024). The relationship between metalinguistic awareness and advanced theory of mind in bilingual and monolingual children. Poster presented at the Child Language Symposium, Newcastle, UK, July 2024. |
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Dixon, H., Shevchenko, J., & Lee, R. (2024). The effect of positive episodic simulation on future predictions in anxious and non-anxious individuals. Poster presented at the Experimental Psychology Society, York, UK, July 2024. |
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Lee, R., Grugan, M., Hegarty, B., Mullan, S., Hart, L., Pickup, H., & Strouse, G.A. (2024). A measure of closeness between grandparents and grandchildren. Poster presented at the International Congress for Infant Studies, Glasgow, UK, July 2024. |
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Jarosz, P., Lee, R., & Ganea, P.A. Young Children’s Inferences of Story Outcomes Based on Verbal and Pictorial Information. Poster presented at the 53rd annual meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, Toronto, Ontario, June 2024. |
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Lee, R., Shardlow, J., Hoerl, C., O’Connor, P.A., & McCormack, T. (2023, August). Temporal asymmetries and the relative utility of memory and experience. Paper presented at the 30th conference of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Prague, Czechia. |
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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 UK XPHI Online, Norwich, UK. |
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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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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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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, Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, MD. |
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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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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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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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Burns, P., McCormack, T., & Lee, R. (2018, February). A developmental perspective on temporal asymmetries. Paper presented at Temporal Asymmetries (AHRC), Warwick, UK. |
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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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Lee, R., Chambers, C.G., & Ganea, P.A. (2017, November). Generic language diminishes children’s reliance on novel discourse information. Poster presented at the 42nd meeting of the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA. |
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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, Canada. |
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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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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. |
