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University of Leicester Psychologists to Present New and Controversial Findings

The University of Leicester School of Psychology is to host a meeting of the Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) for the first time in the Society's 63-year history, from 15th-17th April.

The Society began life in 1946 in Cambridge and, since then, it has became one of the most distinguished societies for psychological research in the world. It holds regular scientific meetings at universities across the UK, and these meetings have developed into prestigious events of considerable scientific importance in experimental psychology research.

Tim Jordan, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University commented: "This will be the first time in the Society's 63 year history that it has held a meeting here at the University of Leicester, and this represents a major scientific milestone for Leicester and for the EPS.

"I took on the task of arranging the meeting shortly after taking the Chair at Leicester in 2005 (these events take a long time to set up) and I am delighted that the EPS agreed to hold its meeting here.

"In many ways, I think this first for Psychology at Leicester reflects the quality of the experimental research conducted in the School of Psychology, and I expect this will be the first of many more important milestones in the continued development of research excellence in the School."

Among the highlights of the meeting will be a Prize Lecture by Professor Steve Tipper (Bangor University) entitled 'Simulation of another person's behaviour: Effects on object and person attributes'.

Professor Tim Jordan and Dr Kevin Paterson are holding a symposium to present new findings from research at Leicester and across the world, entitled "Split-fovea processing in visual word recognition and reading". The human brain has two hemispheres and the way in which the two eyes convey information from words on the page to each of these hemispheres (essentially, how we read) is a major area of research in psychology and neuroscience. This symposium will address this highly controversial topic and reflects the substantial amount of world-leading research on vision, neuroscience and reading that is conducted in the School of Psychology at Leicester.

The School has many areas of research excellence and was commended in the last Research Assessment Exercise for the research conducted in the Language, Perception and Cognitive Processes research group. The activities of this research group are represented by many of the talks given at the meeting and incorporate key areas of vision, language, cognition, cognitive and behavioural neuroscience.