MRC INTEGRATIVE EPIDEMIOLOGY UNIT (IEU)

SEMINAR SERIES

 Thursday, 5^th March, 2015

 16.00 – 17.00
Room OS6 – Oakfield House

 Mark Mon Williams
Professor of Cognitive Psychology
University of Leeds

            “Cognition matters in health and motor matters in cognitive testing”

Abstract

A large number of health problems can be linked directly to an individual’s behaviour. It follows that cognitive development is a critical factor to consider when studying health across the lifespan. There is a long tradition of conceptualising ‘cognition’ as a closed system exclusively concerned with abstract information processing. Nevertheless, there is a growing consensus that the mind must be understood in the context of its relationship to a physical body that interacts with the world. It follows that a full understanding of human behaviour requires a consideration of both the motor and cognitive systems and how these systems interact. I will describe a number of cognitive tests motivated by this ‘embodied cognition’ perspective and try and illustrate the usefulness of this framework through presentation of data from the Born-in-Bradford study (including the longitudinal cohort and the cross-sectional BiB-X sample).

Biography

Mark Mon-Williams is Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Leeds. He studies movement (kinematics) in children with and without neurodevelopmental problems. He is currently studying how robotic systems can help children improve upper limb control. He was awarded his PhD in 1994 and became a Research Fellow within the University of Edinburgh. One year later, he moved to the University of Reading as a Research Fellow before moving to the University of Queensland as Senior Research Fellow. Three years later (1999) he took up his first faculty position at the University of St Andrews. In 2002 he moved to the University of Aberdeen. He moved his laboratories in January 2009 to the University of Leeds where he was appointed to a Chair in Cognitive Psychology and was Head of School from 2011-2014.

                                                                                                                                                                      ALL WELCOME