Attention and Associative Learning

Dr Mitchell studied for his BSc and PhD in psychology, and also conducted 3 years of post-doctoral research, at University College London (1987-1997). His PhD examined conditioning effects in cancer chemotherapy using a rat model, and was supervised by Prof Cecelia Heyes. His post-doc, also with Prof Heyes, concerned an investigation of imitation in rats. Dr Mitchell then moved north to the Wirral, where he worked for Unilever Research, Port Sunlight, as a consumer scientist. Since July 2000, he has worked in the School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Australia. His first position was as a post doctoral research fellow with Prof Peter Lovibond. Dr Mitchell became a member of faculty in 2002. Throughout this period, the focus of his research has been on human associative and perceptual learning. Dr LePelly studied for his undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and carried on to complete his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology (investigating human associative learning) at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of I. P. L. McLaren, graduating in 2002. He then held the Sir Alan Wilson Research Fellowship at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, for just over two years before taking up a lectureship in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University in 2004, and he has been there ever since. Throughout this time his main research interests have been in the fields of human and animal associative learning.

1. An introduction to attention and learning ; 2. Two theories of attention: A review and a possible integration ; 3. Attentional learning ; 4. Selective attention to conditioned stimuli in human discrimination learning: Untangling the effects of outcome prediction, valence, arousal and uncertainty ; 5. Latent inhibition ; 6. Attention and perceptual learning ; 7. Acquired distinctiveness and equivalence: A synthesis ; 8. Attention and human associative learning ; 9. On the use of the term 'attention' ; 10. Attention and memory in human learning ; 11. Backward blocking of relevance-indicating cues:Evidence for locally eayesian learning ; 12. Brain systems of attention in associative learning ; 13. Neural correlates of attentional set ; 14. Clinical studies of attention and learning