Dr. Gemma Taylor
School of Health and Society
Biography
I completed my PhD with Dr Jane Herbert at the University of Sheffield studying the role of attention on learning and memory development across infancy. I then worked as a postdoc with Professor Peter Gerhardstein at Binghamton University, New York for a year developing a gaze contingent paradigm to investigate the development of contour detection and implementing a CCTV set up to studying children’s action imitation from television. After that, I spent two years working as a postdoc at the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development at Lancaster University with Professors Padraic Monaghan and Gert Westermann investigating how children transfer words learnt from storybooks, television and apps to the 3D world. I’m very excited to join the University of Salford this year (2016) as a Lecturer in Psychology.
Areas of research
Child Development, Digital Media, Learning, Memory, Language Development
Module Leader: Introduction to Developmental and Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology and Introduction to Individual Differences.
Screen media is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in children’s day to day lives, my research strives to understand the impact of screen media on children’s early cognitive development. In particular, I am interested in children’s declarative memory development and children’s early word learning. I am currently working on an ESRC funded project titled “Investigating the educational potential of touchscreen apps for children's early vocabulary acquisition” (May 2018-May 2021).
Salford Cognitive Development Lab website: https://www.salford.ac.uk/research/health-sciences/research-groups/psychology/salford-cognitive-development-lab