Dr Mary-Jane Budd

Mary-Jane is a Chartered Psychologist and member of the British Psychological Society. Mary-Jane began her academic career by completing a Business Studies degree and then a Computer Science MSc at Birkbeck. After working in private industry, she completed a BSc in Psychology and went on to complete a PhD in Psychology at Essex university in 2011. Her doctoral thesis was entitled “Simulating children’s picture naming and auditory repetition” and involved looking at children’s speech errors using a computational model of speech production. Mary-Jane also carried out post-doctoral research at Essex university on morphological processing in adults and children using EEG. Mary-Jane has lectured on Research Methods modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate level and also lectures on the Neuropsychology module.

My research interests focus on language processing and communication. In particular, I have studied language production in typically and atypically developing children, and adults using both behavioural (Budd et al. 2010; Budd et al. 2012) and electrophysiological (EEG) approaches (Budd et al., 2013, 2015). I would be interested in extending my research into investigating language production throughout the lifespan. I would also be interested in carrying out further studies involving atypical populations of children (e.g. dyslexia) with reading, comprehension, or language production difficulties.

 

I am also interested in communication especially with our rapidly changing use of language through social media. How communication is changing through text messaging and social media is altering the way we use language is of special interest to me e.g the use of emoticons in messaging

 

I am also involved in research in anxiety in adolescence and how this presents itself (e.g. eating disorders, self-harming, behavioural problems). Current projects in this area include an EEG study investigating the neural correlates associated with attentional bias to underweight images and the relationship with behavioural measures such as body dissatisfaction, body appreciation, social comparison, and self-esteem.

Mary-Jane is interested in language processing and communication. In particular, she has studied language production in typically and atypically developing children and adults using both behavioural and electrophysiological approaches. She would like to carry out more research in language processing of atypical populations.

Mary-Jane is also interested in anxiety in adolescence and is currently involved in research investigating body image.