Caroline completed her BSc Psychology at Goldsmiths College, before moving to UCL for her PhD. She then spent seven years as a research fellow at the MRC Childhood Nutrition Research Centre at the Institute of Child Health, UCL, a research institute affiliated to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, before coming to UEL in October 2007.

Caroline’s research examines the effect of hydration on cognition in children and adults. This includes the effect of drinking water on both cognitive performance and mood.

Caroline is also interested in the effect of nutrition on neuropsychological function and the brain, in children, adolescents and young adults. This includes, for example, long-term follow-up of children born prematurely who were given different diets after birth, and the long-term effects of intrauterine growth restriction.

Her personal web page can be found here.

• Module Leader for PY2104/PY3023: Developmental Psychology
• Module Leader for PYM152 Developmental Psychology
• Tutor for part-time graduate diploma students
• Supervising student research projects

• Hydration and Cognition — especially the effect of hydration status on cognitive performance and mood, and the effects of drinking water on cognition, both in adults and children. Recent work in adults includes examination of the effects of water consumption and expectancy on cognition and the association between fluid availability in exams and exam performance. Recent work in children includes papers on the positive effects of water consumption on cognition. I am also interested in ageing and hydration.
• Effects of Nutrition on Cognition and the Brain — especially effects on long term cognitive outcome and brain structure of: preterm birth; low birthweight and intrauterine growth restriction; long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFAs); aluminium administered via total parenteral nutrition (TPN); whether children have breakfast. Recent work includes papers on the long term effects of early aluminium exposure and the effect of caffeinated drinks on cognition.  
• Imagined Transformations of Perspective — this is collaborative work with Dr Mark Gardner at the University of Westminster.

• BSc Psychology
• Graduate Diploma in Psychology
• MSc Psychology
• PhD Programme

• PY2104/PY3023: Developmental Psychology
• PY3102: Professional Studies in Psychology
• PY3116: Advanced Developmental Psychology
• PYM152: Developmental Psychology

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

• Edmonds, C., Crombie, R., Ballieux, H., Gardner, M.R., & Dawkins, L. (in press). Water consumption, not expectancies about water consumption, affects cognitive performance in adults. Appetite.
• Booth, P., Taylor, B., & Edmonds, C.J. (2012). Water supplementation improves visual attention and fine motor skills in schoolchildren. Education and Health, 30(3), 75–79.
• Gardner, M.R., Sorhus, I., Edmonds, C.J., & Potts, R. (2012). Sex differences in imagined spatial transformations of the human body. Acta Psychologica, 140, 1–6. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.02.002
• Gronholm, P.C., Flynn, M., Edmonds, C.J., & Gardner, M.R. (2012). Empathic and non-empathic routes to visuospatial perspective taking. Consciousness and Cognition, 21, 494–500. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2011.12.004
• Dawkins, L., Shahzad, F.-Z., Ahmed, S.S., & Edmonds, C.J. (2011). Expectation of having consumed caffeine can improve performance and mood. Appetite, 57(3), 597–600. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2011.07.011
• Fewtrell, M., Edmonds, C.J., Isaacs, E., Bishop, N., & Lucas, A. (2011). Aluminium exposure from parenteral nutrition in preterm infants and later outcomes. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 70(3), 299–304. doi:10.1017/S0029665111000498
• Edmonds, C.J. (2010). Does having a drink of water help children think? A summary of some recent findings. School Health, 6(5), 58–60.
• Edmonds, C.J., Isaacs, E.B., Cole, T.J., Rogers, M., Lanigan, J., Singhal, A., … Lucas, A. (2010). The effect of intrauterine growth on verbal IQ scores in childhood: a study of monozygous twins. Pediatrics, 126(5), e1095-e1101. doi:10.1542/peds.2008-3684
• Edmonds, C.J., & Jeffes, B. (2009). Does having a drink help you think? 6–7-year-old children show improvements in cognitive performance from baseline to test after having a drink of water. Appetite, 53, 469–472. 10.1016/j.appet.2009.10.002
• Edmonds, C.J., & Burford, D. (2009). Should children drink more water? The effects of drinking water on cognition in children. Appetite, 52, 776–779. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2009.02.010
• Fewtrell, M.S., Bishop, N.J., Edmonds, C.J., Isaacs E.B., & Lucas, A. (2009). Aluminum exposure from parenteral nutrition in preterm infants: bone health at 15-year follow-up. Pediatrics, 124, 1372–1379. doi:10.1542/peds.2009-0783
• Edmonds, C.J., Isaacs, E.B., Visscher, P.M., Rogers, M., Lanigan, J., Singhal, A., et al. (2008). Inspection time and cognitive abilities in twins aged 7 to 17 years: development, heritability and genetic covariance. Intelligence, 36, 210–225. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2007.05.004

Book Chapters

1. Edmonds, C.J. (2012). Water, hydration status, and cognitive performance. In L. Riby, M. Smith & J. Foster (Eds.), Nutrition and mental performance: a lifespan perspective: Palgrave Macmillan.

 Invited Talks

1. Edmonds, C.J. (2010, 25 February). Nestlé Round Table on Hydration. The Wellcome Trust.
2. Edmonds, C.J. (2010, February). The effect of hydration on cognition in children. Nestlé Research Center, Lausanne, Switzerland.
3. Edmonds, C.J. (2009, 11 March). Nutrition, cognition and the brain. Department of Psychology, University of Westminster.

Conference Papers

1. Booth, P., & Edmonds, C.J. (2012, April). Water consumption positively affects motor and cognitive task performance in children. Paper presented at the BPS conference, London.
2. Pawson, P., Gardner, M.R., Doherty, S., Martin, L., & Edmonds, C.J. (2012, April). Water consumption in exams and its effect on students’ performance. Paper presented at the BPS conference, London.
3. Edmonds, C.J., Crombie, R., Ballieux, H., Gardner, M.R., & Dawkins, L. (2012, April). Expectancy and the water consumption effect. Paper presented at the BPS conference, London.
4. Edmonds, C.J. (2012, March). The effect of hydration on cognition. Paper presented at the British Feeding and Drinking Group Annual Conference, Brighton.
5. Edmonds, C.J., & Burford, D. (2009). Should children drink more water? The effects of drinking water on cognition in children. Paper presented at the BPS Annual Conference, Brighton.
6. Fewtrell, M.S., Bishop, N.J., Edmonds, C.J., Isaacs, E.B., & Lucas, A.L. (2009). Aluminium exposure from intravenous feeding solutions and later bone health: 15 year follow-up of a randomised trial in preterm infants. Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Children’s Bone Health, Cambridge, UK.

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

1. Edmonds,C.J., & Pring, L. (2006). Generating inferences from written and spoken language: a comparison of children with visual impairment and children with sight. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 24, 337–351. doi:10.1348/026151005X35994
2. Isaacs, E.B., Edmonds, C.J., Chong, W.K., Lucas, A., Morley, R., & Gadian, D.G. (2004). Brain morphometry and IQ measurements in preterm children. Brain, 127, 2595–2607. doi:10.1093/brain/awh300
3. Isaacs, E.B., Edmonds, C.J., Chong, W.K., Lucas, A., & Gadian, D.G. (2003). Cortical anomalies associated with visuospatial processing deficits. Annals of Neurology, 53, 468–773. doi:10.1002/ana.10546
4. Isaacs, E.B., Edmonds, C.J., Lucas, A., & Gadian, D.G. (2001). Calculation difficulties in children of very low birthweight: a neural correlate. Brain, 124, 1701–1707. doi:10.1093/brain/124.9.1701

Invited Talks

1. Edmonds, C.J. (2005, 1 June). The effect of birthweight on cognition in childhood: a twin study. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Institute of Child Health, UCL.
2. Edmonds, C.J. (2004, 10 July). Generating inferences from written and spoken language: a comparison of children with visual impairment and children with sight, Mary Kitzinger Trust Workshop. The Wolfson Centre.
3. Edmonds, C.J. (2001, January). Tactical strategy in iterative guessing games. Developmental Research Group, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL.

Conference Papers

1. Edmonds, C.J., Isaacs, E.B., Lucas, A., Chong, W.K., Morley, R., & Gadian, D.G. (2004). Structural brain anomalies associated with IQ decline in preterm children. Paper presented at the British Chapter of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, Edinburgh.
2. Gadian, D.G., Edmonds, C.J., Chong, W.K., Lucas, A., Morley, R., & Isaacs, E.B. (2004). Brain morphometry and IQ measurements in preterm children. Paper presented at the 10th annual meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, Budapest, Hungary.
3. Isaacs, E.B., Edmonds, C.J., Chong, W.K., Lucas, A., & Gadian, D.G. (2004). A neural correlated of declining IQ in preterm children. Paper presented at the 12th meeting of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, Kyoto, Japan.
4. Edmonds, C.J., Gadian, D.G., Lucas, A., & Isaacs, E.B. (2003). Structural anomalies associated with IQ drop in children born preterm. Paper presented at the European Brain and Behaviour Society, Barcelona.
5. Edmonds, C.J. (2002). The application of neuroscience to nutrition. Paper presented at the Rank Prize Symposium on Lactation and Disease, Wordsworth Hotel, Grasmere.
6. Edmonds, C.J., Lucas, A., & Isaacs, E.B. (2002). Long term stability of IQ scores in children born preterm. Paper presented at the BPS Developmental Section Conference, University of Sussex, Brighton.
7. Gadian, D.G., Isaacs, E.B., Edmonds, C.J., & Lucas, A. (2002). Visuospatial processing deficits in children of very low birthweight — a neural correlate. Paper presented at the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.
8. Isaacs, E.B., Edmonds, C.J., Lucas, A., & Gadian, D. (2002). A neural correlate of visuospatial processing deficits in neurologically normal preterm children. Paper presented at the Human Brain Mapping conference, Japan.
9. Isaacs, E.B., Edmonds, C.J., Lucas, A., & Gadian, D.G. (2001). Mathematical ability in children of very low birthweight: a neural correlate. Paper presented at the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.
10. Isaacs, E.B., Edmonds, C.J., Lucas, A., & Gadian, D.G. (2001). Mathematical ability in children of very low birthweight: a neural correlate. Paper presented at the Cognitive Neurosciences conference.
11. Edmonds, C.J. (1999). Children’s expectations of strategy in a competitive guessing game: what happens when the experimenter plays stupid? Paper presented at the Society for Research in Child Development, Albuquerque.
12. Edmonds, C.J. (1999). How do children respond to the unexpected? Theory of mind and executive function in a competitive game. Paper presented at the 9th European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Greece and the BPS Developmental Section Conference, Nottingham.

• Honorary Research Fellow, MRC Childhood Nutrition Research Centre, Institute of Child Health, UCL
• Member of the Institute for Research in Child Development
• Chartered Psychologist
• Associate Fellow of the BPS
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Does having a drink of water help children think? A summary of some recent findings

Edmonds, C.J.

Water is the optimal drink for both adults and children. New guidelines specify how much children should drink during the day. Children are at greater risk of dehydration than adults. While English schools must legally provide drinking water for children, they differ in how they put this legislation into practice. Some schools allow children to have drinking water on their desks, while others restrict access. There are links between the type of access and the hydration state of children. In adults, there are well established links between dehydration and negative effects on cognitive performance. Recent studies suggest that dehydrated children also perform poorly on cognitive tests. More recent research has found that giving children a drink of water improved their cognitive performance on tests of memory, attention, and visual search tasks. These positive effects on cognition are likely to underpin positive effects on academic performance and providing regular access to drinking water in schools would be a cheap and easy way to improve children’s school performance. Further research is indicated to confirm the role of hydration in improving cognition in a UK population and to explore the links to academic and behavioural outcomes.

Brain morphometry and IQ measurements in preterm children

Isaacs, E.B., Edmonds, C.J., Chong, W.K., Lucas, A., Morley, R., & Gadian, D.G.

Children born preterm provide a fruitful population for studying structure–function relationships because they often have specific functional deficits in the context of normal neurological status. We selected a group of preterm adolescents with deficits in judgment of line orientation. Despite their very low birth weight, all were neurologically normal with no consistent abnormalities on conventional magnetic resonance imaging. However, voxel-based morphometric analysis of their magnetic resonance imaging scans showed areas of decreased gray matter and increased white matter most prominently in right ventral extrastriate cortex, close to an area previously implicated in the line orientation task. We suggest that these anomalies of cortical architecture relate to impaired performance on the line orientation task.

Sex differences in imagined spatial transformations of the human body

Gardner, M.R., Sorhus, I., Edmonds, C.J., & Potts, R.

Little research to date has examined whether sex differences in spatial ability extend to the mental self rotation involved in taking on a third party perspective. This question was addressed in the present study by assessing components of imagined perspective transformations in twenty men and twenty women. Participants made speeded left–right judgements about the hand in which an object was held by front- and back-facing schematic human figures in an “own body transformation task.” Response times were longer when the figure did not share the same spatial orientation as the participant, and were substantially longer than those made for a control task requiring left-right judgements about the same stimuli from the participant’s own point of view. A sex difference in imagined perspective transformation favouring males was found to be restricted to the speed of imagined self rotation, and was not observed for components indexing readiness to take a third party point of view, nor in left-right confusion. These findings indicate that the range of spatial abilities for which a sex difference has been established should be extended to include imagined perspective transformations. They also suggest that imagined perspective transformations may not draw upon those empathic social–emotional perspective taking processes for which females show an advantage.

Empathic and non-empathic routes to visuospatial perspective taking

Gronholm, P.C., Flynn, M., Edmonds, C.J. & Gardner, M.R.

The present study examined whether strategy moderated the relationship between visuospatial perspective-taking and empathy. Participants (N = 96) undertook both a perspective-taking task requiring speeded spatial judgements made from the perspective of an observed figure and the Empathy Quotient questionnaire, a measure of trait empathy. Perspective-taking performance was found to be related to empathy in that more empathic individuals showed facilitated performance particularly for figures sharing their own spatial orientation. This relationship was restricted to participants that reported perspective-taking by mentally transforming their spatial orientation to align with that of the figure; it was absent in those adopting an alternative strategy of transposing left and right whenever confronted with a front-view figure. Our finding that strategy moderates the relationship between empathy and visuospatial perspective-taking enables a reconciliation of the apparently inconclusive findings of previous studies and provides evidence for functionally dissociable empathic and non-empathic routes to visuospatial perspective-taking.

Effects of caffeine and expectancy on mood and behaviour

Dawkins, L., Shahzad, F.-Z., Ahmed, S.S., Edmonds, C.J.

We explored whether caffeine, and expectation of having consumed caffeine, affects attention, reward responsivity and mood using double-blinded methodology. 88 participants were randomly allocated to ‘drink-type’ (caffeinated/decaffeinated coffee) and ‘expectancy’ (told caffeinated/told decaffeinated coffee) manipulations. Both caffeine and expectation of having consumed caffeine improved attention and psychomotor speed. Expectation enhanced self-reported vigour and reward responsivity. Self-reported depression increased at post-drink for all participants, but less in those receiving or expecting caffeine. These results suggest caffeine expectation can affect mood and performance but do not support a synergistic effect.

Aluminium exposure from parenteral nutrition in preterm infants and later outcomes

Fewtrell, M., Edmonds, C.J., Isaacs, E., Bishop, N. Lucas, A.

Aluminium is the most common metallic element, but has no known biological role. It accumulates in the body when protective gastrointestinal mechanisms are bypassed, renal function is impaired, or exposure is high — all of which apply frequently to preterm infants. Recognised clinical manifestations of aluminium toxicity include dementia, anaemia and bone disease. Parenteral nutrition (PN) solutions are liable to contamination with aluminium, particularly from acidic solutions in glass vials, notably calcium gluconate. When fed parenterally, infants retain >75% of the aluminium, with high serum, urine and tissue levels. Later health effects of neonatal intravenous aluminium exposure were investigated in a randomised trial comparing standard PN solutions with solutions specially sourced for low aluminium content. Preterm infants exposed for >10 d to standard solutions had impaired neurologic development at 18 months. At 13–15 years, subjects randomised to standard PN had lower lumbar spine bone mass; and, in non-randomised analyses, those with neonatal aluminium intake above the median had lower hip bone mass. Given the sizeable number of infants undergoing intensive care and still exposed to aluminium via PN, these findings have contemporary relevance. Until recently, little progress had been made on reducing aluminium exposure, and meeting Food and Drug Administration recommendations (<5 mg/kg per d) has been impossible in patients <50 kg using available products. Recent advice from the UK Medicines and Healthcare regulatory Authority that calcium gluconate in small volume glass containers should not be used for repeated treatment in children <18 years, including preparation of PN, is an important step towards addressing this problem.

The effect of intrauterine growth on verbal IQ scores in childhood: a study of monozygous twins

Edmonds, C.J., Isaacs, E.B., Cole, T.J., Rogers, M., Lanigan, J., Singhal, A., … Lucas, A.

OBJECTIVE: Given the adverse neurobiological effects of suboptimal nutrition on the developing brain, it is of social and medical importance to determine if the global prevalence of poor intrauterine growth causes lasting cognitive deficits. We examined whether suboptimal intrauterine growth relates to impaired cognitive outcome by comparing birth weight and cognition in monozygotic twins and considered whether children within-pair differences in birth weight were related to within-pair differences in IQ scores.

METHODS: A total of 71 monozygotic twin pairs (aged 7 years 11 months to 17 years 3 months) participated. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Third Edition, was administered, and verbal IQ (VIQ) and performance IQ (PIQ) scores were calculated. Regression was used to relate within-pair differences in birth weight to within-pair differences in IQ scores.

RESULTS: VIQ but not PIQ score was affected by prenatal growth restriction. The results suggest that the mean advantage for heavier twins relative to their lighter co-twins can be as much as half an SD in VIQ points. In pairs with minimal discordance, heavier twins had lower VIQ scores than their lighter co-twins.

CONCLUSIONS: Our study results suggest that lower birth weight in monozygotic twins can also have a negative long-term impact on cognition both in infants who are small at birth and also those with birth weights across the spectrum. Studying monozygotic twins enabled us to examine the effect of reduced intrauterine growth on cognition independently of confounding factors, including parental IQ and education and infant gender, age, genetic characteristics, and gestation.

Does having a drink help you think? 6–7-year-old children show improvements in cognitive performance from baseline to test after having a drink of water

Edmonds, C.J., & Jeffes, B.

Little research has examined the effect of water consumption on cognition in children. We examined whether drinking water improves performance from baseline to test in twenty-three 6–7-year-old children. There were significant interactions between time of test and water group (water/no water), with improvements in the water group on thirst and happiness ratings, visual attention and visual search, but not visual memory or visuomotor performance. These results indicate that even under conditions of mild dehydration, not as a result of exercise, intentional water deprivation or heat exposure, children’s cognitive performance can be improved by having a drink of water.

Should children drink more water? The effects of drinking water on cognition in children

Edmonds, C.J., & Burford, D.

While dehydration has well-documented negative effects on adult cognition, there is little research on hydration and cognitive performance in children. We investigated whether having a drink of water improved children’s performance on cognitive tasks. Fifty-eight children aged 7–9 years old were randomly allocated to a group that received additional water or a group that did not. Results showed that children who drank additional water rated themselves as significantly less thirsty than the comparison group (p = 0.002), and they performed better on visual attention tasks (letter cancellation, p = 0.02; spot the difference memory tasks, ps = 0.019 and 0.014).