Helen Williams

Biography

I joined the School of Psychology at Keele as a Lecturer in October 2013. Prior to this I got my BSc, MSc, and PhD from the University of Leeds before moving to North America. From 2010 till 2012 I worked as a Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow at the University of Richmond, Virginia, USA, and from 2012 till 2013 I completed a second Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Research and scholarship

My research mostly deals with higher order cognitive processes, specifically the judgments people can make when learning information or retrieving material from memory. The majority of my research to date has focused on how people make and understand judgments of subjective experience using variants of the Remember-Know procedure to examine contributions of recollection and familiarity processes to recognition.

In April 2016 I was awarded an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) award of £213,355 from the Future Research Leaders scheme for a 3-year research project titled "Measuring Recollection and Familiarity in Ageing and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)".

I have also done research into the associative deficit in aging; person perception: aging and Alzheimer’s disease; metacognitive awareness: judgments-of-learning (JOLs); and autobiographical memory.

More information about my research can be found here: http://helenlouisewilliams28.wordpress.com/

Teaching

Year 1

10034 – Biological and Cognitive Psychology 1
10020 – Natural, Unnatural, Supernatural: The psychology of unusual phenomena
10019 Applied Psychology
10034 Introduction to Biological and Cognitive Psychology
10036 Introduction to Research Design for Psychology

Year 2

20044 – Statistics for Psychology
20038 - Cognitive Development

Year 3

30061 – Final Year Project
30067 – Individual Differences and Conceptual Issues
30114 – Everyday Memory and Amnesia
30067 - Individual Differences and Conceptual Issues

MSc

40047 - Research Preparation
40038 - Research Apprenticeship

Publications

Book chapters:

Moulin, C.J.A., Perfect, T.J., Akhtar, S., Williams, H.L., & Souchay, C. (2011). Judgements of learning and study time allocation: An illustration from neuropsychology. In J. Leboe & P.A. Higham (eds.) Constructions of Remembering and Metacognition (pp. 167-181). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Williams, H.L. & Conway, M.A. (2009). Networks of autobiographical memories. In P. Boyer & J. Wertsch (eds.), Memory in Mind and Culture (pp. 33-61). New York: Cambridge Psychology Press.
Williams, H.L., Conway, M.A., & Cohen, G. (2008). Autobiographical Memory. In G. Cohen & M.A. Conway (eds.), Memory in the Real World (3rd Edition; pp. 21-90). London: Psychology Press.
Conway, M.A. & Williams, H.L. (2008). Autobiographical memory. In John H. Byrne et al., Learning and Memory: A Comprehensive Reference (pp. 893-909). Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.
Williams, H.L., Conway, M.A., & Baddeley, A.D. (2008). The boundaries of episodic memories. In T.F. Shipley, & J.M. Zacks (Eds.), Understanding events: From perception to action (pp. 589-616). New York: Oxford University Press.

Recent conferences:

Williams, H.L. & Eardley, G. (2019). Emotional expression and angle of presentation differentially influence predictions and performance for face recognition. Proceedings of the Psychonomic Society, Vol. 24, November [Poster Abstract].
Adams, J., Bodner, G.E., & Williams, H.L. (2019). Effects of recollect/familiar task options on the picture superiority effect. Proceedings of the Psychonomic Society, Vol. 24, November [Poster Abstract].
Williams, H.L. & Adams, J. (2019). Comparing three methods of assessing subjective recollection and familiarity states in aging. 5th International Conference on Aging and Cognition, Zurich, April.
Williams, H.L. Adams, J., & Bodner, G.E. (2018). Revisiting how levels of processing influence recollection and familiarity: Comparing judgment and rating measures. Proceedings of the Psychonomic Society, Vol. 23, November [Poster Abstract].
Williams, H.L. Adams, J., & Bodner, G.E. (2017). Comparing three methods of assessing subjective recollection and familiarity states. British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Conference, Newcastle University, September.
Williams, H.L. & Lindsay, D.S. (2016). Know versus Familiar in the Remember-Know paradigm. International Conference on Memory (ICOM-6), Budapest, July.
Williams, H.L. & Lindsay, D.S. (2016). Recognition sensitivity, confidence, and bias in continuous versus study-test recognition procedures. Proceedings of the Psychonomic Society, Vol. 21, November [Poster Abstract].
Williams, H.L. & Adams, J. (2015). Metacognitive monitoring abilities in obsessive-compulsive checking. Greater Yorkshire Memory Meeting, York, December.
Williams, H.L. & Adams, J. (2015). Metacognitive monitoring and prospective memory abilities in obsessive-compulsive checking. Proceedings of the Psychonomic Society, Vol. 20, November [Poster Abstract].
Radu, A., Williams, H.L., & Ullah, S. (2015). Quantifying students’ confidence in learning concepts in chemistry and their perception of being independent learners. Chemistry Education Research & Practice: Gordon Research Conference, Bates College, Maine, US, June.
Williams, H.L. & Lindsay, D.S. (2014). Metacognitive processes at retrieval: Does assessing recollection influence confidence? (or vice versa). Metacognition 2014, Clermont-Ferrand, France, September.
Williams, H.L. & Lindsay, D.S. (2013). Know versus familiar in recognition memory. Proceedings of the Psychonomic Society, Vol. 18, November [Poster Abstract].

Roles

Health & Safety Local Officer
MSc Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Programme Lead
Undergraduate Academic Mentor

School of Psychology
Dorothy Hodgkin Building
Keele University
Staffordshire
ST5 5BG

Psychology School office
Tel: +44(0)1782 731831
Fax: +44(0)1782 733387
Email: psychology@keele.ac.uk

Accessibility
Accessibility information for Dorothy Hodgkin Building can be found on its AccessAble page.

Follow School of Psychology

Dr Helen Williams