How does interpersonal coordination influence our understanding of others’ mental states? (WyerNU20PSY)

Even the most fleeting of social encounters relies on our remarkable ability to coordinate with each other, whether in terms of our attention, our actions, or our speech. The PhD project will investigate whether interpersonal coordination also promotes awareness of others’ mental states and, conversely, whether obstacles to coordination make it harder for us to understand what others are thinking and feeling. A number of elements may be explored within the context of the project, including individual differences (e.g., between individuals on the autism spectrum vs. neurotypicals) in the ability to coordinate, the consequences of coordination success vs failure for perceptions of agency and for the operation of theory of mind, and/or the implications of coordination for the attribution of human-like mental states to non-human agents (e.g., robots). Please contact Dr. Natalie Wyer ([Email Address Removed]) to discuss ideas/plans for developing a proposal.

For more information on the supervisor for this project, please go here: https://people.uea.ac.uk/n_wyer

This is a PhD programme.

The start date of the project is October 2020.

The mode of study is full-time/part-time. The studentship length is 3 years for a full-time student and 6 years for a part-time student.