Dr Roland Baddeley

Summary

The real world is fundamentally noisy and uncertain. Dealing with this uncertainty is one of the most diffuclt things animals do. Over the last 200 years Bayesian techniques have been developed to deal with such uncertainty, and the development of computers has great expanded what problems can be approached.

I am interested in applying such techniques to understanding human and animal cognition. As long as reasonably large data sets can be gathered, insight can be gained into most problems, but at the moment I am interested in visual development, eposodic and semantic memory (and forgetting), eye movements, and signalling in animals.

Recent and current grants

• Roland Baddeley £ 33,000 (1998) MRC One year case award: optimal motor adaptation to a changing world.
• Daniel Osorio and Roland Baddeley (2000-2003) BBSRC £178,000 The analysis of signalling in cuttlefish.
• Roland Baddeley and Daniel Osorio (1999-2002) EPSRC £168,000Illumination invariance and the natural statistics of the world
• Roland Baddeley (2004-2007) £170,000 EPSRC Reverse Engineering of Vertebrate Brain, Supported by EPSRC grant EP/C516303/1

Biography

My first degree was in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science from Sussex, and after various computer related jobs in the industry, I did a PhD with Roger Watt at Stirling University on statistical models of early vision. After post-docs in Cambridge Physiology department (with Horace Barlow), and Oxford Psychology and Physiology, I got a lectureship in Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex. I moved at the end of 2003 to Bristol.

Teaching

Experimental Psychology:

• Advanced Statistics II

I teach on the 2nd year course Advanced Statistics, the third year option Computer Models in Psychology, the third year option Computational Neuroscience, and the Masters level course Psychological Statistics. I am the organiser of the Research Methods MSc and Masters course. organiser.

PhD students supervised and co-supervised

• Ben Vincent (2001-2004).
• Townshend JM (1999-2002)
• John Fennell
• Joanna Hall
• Scott Watkins

Keywords

• Bayesian inference

Expertise

My first degree was in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science from Sussex, and after various computer related jobs in industry, I did a PhD with Roger Watt at Stirling University on statistical models of early vision. After post-docs in Cambridge Physiology dept (with Horace Barlow), and Oxford Psychology and Physiology, I got a lectureship in Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex. I moved at the end of 2003 to Bristol. My research interests include; animal communication, Bayesian modelling, computer models in psychology, statistics of natural images, eye movements, memory and forgetting and motor learning. I teach on the 2nd year course advanced statistics, the third year option Computer models in Psychology, the third year option Computational Neuroscience, and the Masters level course Psychological Statistics. I am organiser of the Research Methods MSc and Masters course organiser.

Memberships

Organisations

School of Experimental Psychology

Other sites

• Neuroscience

Experimental Psychology staff

• Experimental Psychology academic staff

Research themes

• Cognitive Processes
• Decision-making and Rationality

Research groups

• Perception Group
• Decision-making in an Unstable World

Links

•   home page

Recent publications

• Baddeley, RJ 2013, ‘Individual Differences in Fornix Microstructure and Body Mass Index’. PLoSONE, vol 8.
• Hall, JR, Cuthill, IC, Baddeley, RJ, Shohet, AJ & Scott-Samuel, NE 2013, ‘Camouflage, detection and identification of moving targets’. Proceedings of the Royal Society B - Biological Sciences, vol 280.
• Fennell, JG & Baddeley, RJ 2013, ‘Reward is assessed in three dimensions that correspond to the semantic differential’. PLoS ONE.
• Moss, FJM & Baddeley, RJ 2012, ‘Eye Movements to Natural Images as a Function of Sex and Personality’. PLoSONE, vol 7.
• Dienes, z & Baddeley, RJ 2012, ‘Rapidly measuring the speed of unconscious learning: Amnesics learn quickly and happy people slowly’. PLoSONE.
• Allen, WL, Baddeley, RJ, Cuthill, IC & Scott-Samuel, NE 2012, ‘A quantitative test of the predicted relationship between countershading and lighting environment.’. The American Naturalist, vol 180., pp. 762-776
• Fennell, J & Baddeley, R 2012, ‘Uncertainty plus prior equals rational bias: An intuitive Bayesian probability weighting function’. Psychological Review, vol 119., pp. 878-887
• To, M, Baddeley, RJ, Troscianko, T & Tolhurst, D 2011, ‘A general rule for sensory cue summation: evidence from photographic, musical, phonetic and cross-modal stimuli’. Proceedings of the Royal Society B - Biological Sciences, vol 278.
• Allen, W, Cuthill, I, Scott-Samuel, N & Baddeley, R 2011, ‘Why the leopard got its spots: relating pattern development to ecology in felids’. Proceedings of the Royal Society London B, vol 278., pp. 1373 - 1380
• Scott-Samuel, N, Baddeley, R, Palmer, C & Cuthill, I 2011, ‘Dazzle camouflage affects speed perception’. Plos One, vol 6., pp. 1 - 5

View complete publications list in the University of Bristol publications system