Research Groups
The Social Development Laboratory is part of the Developmental Studies Centre in the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. The lab’s work focuses on examining the development and consequences of children and adolescents’ social relationships and social understanding. Research areas include:
- understanding of self-presentation
- online self-disclosure behaviours
- online passive and active use
- conversations and learning
- children and adolescents’ ethnic and gender identity
- emotional, moral and ethical understanding
- parenting and mapping peers social and friendship networks.
The Lab Director is Professor Dawn Watling
The HEAD Group is researching individual differences in health, education and cognitive development across the lifespan, with a focus on dissecting the causes and correlates of individual differences in mental health and academic achievement. The group employs interdisciplinary research methods combining behavioural genetic and statistical genetic methods with psychometrics and innovative assessment techniques.
Through collaborative research, it aims to increase understanding of the diverse educational and health trajectories, ultimately contributing to interventions that support every child in reaching their maximum potential and enhancing their wellbeing.
The Lab Director is Dr. Kaili Rimfeld
At the Language and Reading Acquisition (LARA) lab, we are interested in oral language and literacy development in childhood and adolescence. We work with children with and without reading and language difficulties and use longitudinal and experimental designs as well as eye tracking methodology in our research.
The lab is directed by Professor Jessie Ricketts
HIVE is an interdisciplinary group of academics that was first established at Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL) in 2018. Since then we have expanded our network. Our members have backgrounds in law, information security, neuroscience, forensic and developmental psychology.
HIVE members are conducting interdisciplinary research into a) improving security awareness and responses to financial elder abuse, and b) online security and safety risks for adolescents with regard to cyberbullying and cyberstalking.
Our team is looking to address questions in the above areas using their expertise in:
- Decision making and risk taking
- Regulatory frameworks, expressive rights and privacy
- Information Security and privacy risk, and cybercrime
- Elder Abuse; cyberstalking
- Self-disclosure and adolescents’ understanding of social media risks
The Lab Director is Professor Dawn Watling
Royal Holloway Baby Lab is a research facility in the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London in Egham, Surrey. We are a team of researchers studying various aspects of babies’ development, including self and social development, as well as language development.
The Lab director is Dr. Jeanne Shinskey
The Eyewitness Lab is led by Prof. Amina Memon (Psychology). Their main interest is in studying the conditions under which the memory of an eyewitness is most reliable at the time it is elicited and in court. Lab members are interested in investigative interviewing, eyewitness recall in virtual reality, face recognition, memory for traumatic events, cognitive bias deception detection and juror decision making. Some of us have a background in experimental cognitive and social psychology and others work in applied contexts as in clinical work and advocacy.
Recent projects include our study of single vs repeated traumas in adults with post-traumatic stress disorder and vulnerability in interviews conducted in asylum contexts. Current projects include enhancing eyewitness recall using virtual reality, beliefs about verbal and on-verbal indicators of deceit and live vs video-mediated communications on credibility in legal settings.
The Lab Director is Professor Amina Memon.
The N-CoDe lab, or the Neuroscience of Communication Development lab, is based in the Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London.
Our primary focus is identifying how the brains of those with childhood speech and language disorders (such as developmental language disorder, dyslexia, and stuttering) differ from those without these disorders. We want to use this knowledge to improve our understanding of these disorders, as well as improve clinical and educational tools and practice.
In our research, we use behavioural paradigms implemented online and in the lab, as well as structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging.
The lab is directed by Professor Saloni Krishnan
The SGG is a cross-department group consisting of 20 researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Department of Economics. SGG group members come from diverse academic backgrounds in statistics, psychology, neuroscience and economics and we work collaboratively to make the most of everyone’s expertise. It aims to bring genetically sensitive designs to the curriculum and research at Royal Holloway.
- Gene-environment interplay
- Intergenerational transmission
- Risk prediction using polygenic scores and environmental risk factors
- Assessing the contribution of genetic variation to psychiatric disorders and other traits
- Causal interference
The Lab Director is Dr. Kaili Rimfeld
In the Connected Memory Lab, we use advanced neuroimaging techniques and naturalistic cognitive paradigms to investigate the brain networks underpinning event memory and perception. Our ultimate aim is to understand how these networks change over the lifespan, and within individuals at increased risk of neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Current projects
The lab is directed by Dr Carl Hodgetts