Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Andrew Olson is interested in developing explicit models of cognitive processes using a combination of computer modelling, neuropsychological testing and psychological experimentation. His lab is currently working on examining why some groups of people find it very hard to learn to read and write. How do they represent language? What is different from groups that learn more easily? Dr Olson and his researchers have been working with deaf participants and with developmental dyslexics, as well as exploring brain changes during word learning to explore this area.

Dr Olson is also developing mathematical models of the difficulties patients have after they have had brain damage that affects their speech production. To do this, he has been modelling patterns of errors produced by aphasic patients with phonological buffer deficits, jargonaphasia and letter-by-letter reading. He is very happy to hear from doctoral researchers interested in any of the above areas who would like to join the language processing and cognition group in which his research is situated.