About
Research
Email: lubna.ahmed@stmarys.ac.uk
Tel: 020 8240 4264
Biography
Lubna has a BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Sciences, MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience, MSc in Research Methods in Psychology. She also completed a PhD in Cognitive Psychology in 2010 from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Lubna’s teaching reflects her research expertise and is mainly in the field of Cognitive Psychology, research methods, statistics and experimental project supervision. She has also completed a higher education teaching certificate.
Lubna currently teaches the modules below in addition to supervising dissertations at PhD, MSc, MRes, and BSc level.
Modules
- Neuroscience: Social and Individual difference (Module conveyor)
- Cognitive Neuroscience (Module conveyor)
- Quantitative Research methods (Module conveyor)
- Health Psychology (Module conveyor)
- Transferable skills (Module conveyor)
Research
Research profile
Lubna is a research-active academic and is leading work on several innovative projects. Her current interests can be summarised into the following broad themes; Visual attention, social cognition, Cross-cultural differences in cognition, and minority group research.
Her PhD research utilised a Cognitive Psychology approach to test and develop theories on how attention is impacted by cognitive load. Or put another way, how distracted we become in mentally effortful situations. Her most recent work applies the visual attention theories to more socially relevant visual information. For instance, how reductions in cognitive resources affect our ability to correctly recognise emotions displayed in facial expression and body language – does our mental state dictate how well we can ‘read’ people? In addition, she also addresses the impact environment (nature Vs. urban) may have on efficiency of cognitive functions. In particular, exploring the potential restorative effect engaging with nature has on attention and cognitive functioning. In the past, she has also been involved in projects addressing the importance of retrieval cues to memory retrieval, and also factors affecting task switching.
In 2010 Lubna was awarded a British Academy grant to conduct a research project in Japan; the objective of this work is to investigate if cultural rearing and experience influences how we process and interpret cognitive information. With collaborators at Kyoto University, differences between how East (Japanese) and Western (British) individuals process visual stimuli and facial expressions were uncovered. Her current projects further investigate the fascinating culture-cognition interplay.
Finally, in parallel to the cognitive psychology projects, she also conducts minority group research. Some recent projects from this prospective have explored ethnic differences in parental feeding practices, the experience of BAME students at University and health inequalities experienced by minority groups.
Lubna is a member of the Centre for Applied Health and Wellbeing.
Her extended research profile can be viewed in Research Gate.
PhD supervision
Lubna is keen to supervise research projects of PhD students in any of the above or related areas. The methodologies available include behavioural computer based or online testing. Several neuroimaging techniques, including, EEG/ERP, MUSE, TMS, tDCS, eye tracking as well as physiological and psychological measures are available for research.
Please email Lubna if you would like to discuss projects further. lubna.ahmed@stmarys.ac.uk
Selected Publications
- Lubna Ahmed, Yoshiyuki Ueda, Jun Saiki (under review). Does Cognitive Load affect Facial Expression Categorisation? It depends on your Cultural Background. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- Ahmed, L. (2018). Knowing how you are feeling depends on what’s on my mind: Cognitive load and expression categorization. Emotion, 18(2), 190-201.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000312
- Nadia Ali, Lubna Ahmed & Sarah Rose. (2017). Identifying predictors of students' perception of and engagement with assessment feedback. Active Learning in Higher Education. ISSN 1469-7874, 22 November. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787417735609.
- Nadia Ali, Sarah Rose & Lubna Ahmed (2014). Psychology students’ perception of and engagement with feedback as a function of year of study. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2014.936355
- Ahmed, L & de Fockert, JW. (2012). Working memory can both impair and improve selective attention. Evidence from the Navon paradigm. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, Online First™,
- Ahmed, L & J de Fockert, JW. Focusing on Attention (2012). The Effects of Working Memory Capacity and Load on Selective Attention. PLoS ONE, 28 Aug 2012.10.1371/journal.pone.004310.
- Caparos S, Ahmed L, Bremner AJ, de Fockert JW, Linnell KJ, Davidoff J (2012). Exposure to an urban environment alters the local bias of a remote culture. Cognition, Volume 122, Issue 1, Pages 80–85.
- Sumner and L. Ahmed. Task switching (2006). The effect of task recency with dual- and single-affordance stimuli. The quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Jul;59(7):1255-76.
- Timothy J. Perfect, Louisa-Jayne Stark, Jeremy J. Tree, Christopher J.A. Moulin, L. Ahmed, and Russell Hutter. Transfer appropriate forgetting (2004). The cue-dependent nature of retrieval-induced forgetting. Journal of Memory and Language, Volume 51, Issue 3, 399–417.