Current research

My research investigates the idea that when an experience is shared, the presence of the other person enriches it. This enrichment can result in measurable changes to event processing (Shteynberg, 2017). This includes speeding up reaction to events, (Frischen, et al, 2007), changing item likeability (Bayliss,et al, 2006), as well as growing evidence of changes in memory for objects in both long term memory (Dodd, et al, 2012) and working memory (Gregory & Jackson, 2017; Gregory and Jackson 2018). Research conducted to date has been key in providing evidence of a social effect on memory, yet the nature and mechanism of this effect remains unclear. I aim to advance understanding of how and when social contexts enrich memories using a working memory paradigm with complex objects in realistic social environments. I use virtual reality (VR) to present controlled but realistic scenarios in which participants memory for objects will be tested while a virtual human shares, or does not share their attention to these objects. In order to understand the social nature of any effects, a non social cue in the form of a directed ‘stick’, which points towards or away from crucial items, is also used. Neural responses are collected in order to investigate the influence of sharing attention on neural frequencies that relate to attention (alpha) and memory (theta) in a social context (e.g. Bögels, et al, 2015).

The Avatars were created using the defaults in Adobe Fuse (discontinued software), given a bone structure to allow animation and put into a seated position in Mixamo, and finally animated to make head movements using Unity, where the experiment was also created using the Unity experimental framework (UXF). All software is available to use for free for non commercial purposes.

Please see my OSF page for recent study registrations, preprints, data and stimuli.

An example trial from the task is shown below