Claire Monroy

Biography

Claire is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist, originally from California in the United States. Claire joined Keele University in August 2021 as a lecturer in Psychology. Prior to coming to Keele Claire was a postdoctoral scholar at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center from 2016-2021, where she held an NRSA postdoctoral fellowship from the United States National Institutes of Health. Claire completed her PhD in 2017 in developmental cognitive neuroscience at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Research and scholarship

My research examines a simple but important question: how do early sensorimotor experiences guide social and cognitive development in infancy and childhood? I am interested in exploring the questions of how we come to understand and predict the actions they observe others perform, how this ability interfaces with emerging motor skills during infancy, and how sensorimotor experiences contribute to the development of other key cognitive abilities like attention, learning, and language. My hope is to contribute general understanding of cognitive development as well as knowledge that will directly benefit vulnerable children and families. My current research centers around the following main themes: (i) how early sensorimotor experiences guide perception and learning in typical development (ii) how atypical sensory experiences like hearing loss affects the development of general cognitive skills (iii) the real-world relevance of these early experiences for parent-child interactions and communication. To study these questions, I integrate several methodologies including head-mounted and traditional eye-tracking, neuroimaging (EEG), behavioural observation, and clinical intervention studies in both typical and atypical infant and adult populations.

Teaching

• Module Leader PSY-20023 Cognitive Neuroscience
• Module Leader PSY-40053 Advanced Cognitive Neuroscience Research Methods
• Module Team Member PSY-20012 Developmental and Social Psychology
• Module Team Member PSY-30099 Key Readings in Cognitive Psychology

Collaborations and grants awards

Grants: F32 Postdoctoral Fellowship, National Institutes of Health (2018-2021). Project Title: Action and interaction in infants with hearing loss, before and after cochlear implantation, grant number F32DC017076