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Dr Paula Booth

Lecturer

Health Promotion and Behaviour Research Group, Psychology

Paula Booth is a lecturer in the School of Psychology. She is the module leader for Applied Child Psychology and the Deputy Programme leader for BSc Child Psychology. Her research interests are focused on how attitudes influence food and drink consumption and how hydration has an effect on cognitive performance.

    Paula completed her BSc in Psychology at the University of East London, then spent time at UEL as Research Assistant in the School of Health and Biosciences before successfully passing her PhD viva at UEL in 2015. Paula’s PhD research investigated the effects of water consumption and dehydration on cognitive performance and mood in schoolchildren.

    Paula worked as a Research Fellow at the London South Bank University before returning to UEL in February 2017 as a lecturer.

    Her research interests are focused on the effects of health behaviours such as water consumption and diet on cognitive performance. Additionally, Paula has an interest in how attitudes influence food and drink consumption.


    Overview

    My main area of interest is looking at the effects of dehydration and water consumption on cognitive performance and fine motor skills in children (Booth, Taylor & Edmonds, 2012). I would like to start expanding this research by looking at the effects of other beverages, such as milk, and nutritional substances on cognitive performance and fine motor skills.
    Additionally, I am interested in research which looks at implicit and explicit attitudes.  Often results are different when explicit measures of attitude are gathered using questionnaires and surveys when compared to implicit measures of attitude which are more automatic and less consciously controlled. For example, people are less likely to express positive attitudes towards cigarettes in a questionnaire but results from an Implicit Attitude Task may reveal that they associate cigarettes with positive images or words (Booth, Albery & Frings, 2017). I would be interested in expanding this research to investigate attitudes towards nutritional substances such as sugar.


    Collaborators

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    Research

    Booth P, Albery IP, Frings D. (2017) Effect of e-cigarette advertisements and antismoking messages on explicit and implicit attitudes towards tobacco and e-cigarette smoking in 18–65-year-olds: a randomised controlled study protocol.  BMJ Open 2017;7:e014361. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2016-014361

    Booth, P., Taylor, B. and Edmonds, C. J. (2012) 'Water supplementation improves visual attention and fine motor skills in schoolchildren'. Education and Health, 30(3), pp. 75-79.

    Booth, P. and Henderson-Begg, S. (2011). A comparison between Flash and Second Life programmes as aids in the learning of basic laboratory procedures. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 22(3), 445-465. Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

    Booth, P., Kebede-Westhead, E., Heaney R. and Henderson-Begg, S (2010) A Pilot Evaluation of an Online Tool Designed to Aid Development of Basic Laboratory Skills.
    http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/vol15/beej-15-c3.aspx

     

    Booth, P., Albery, I. P., Cox, S., & Frings, (2019) D Survey of the effect of viewing an online e-cigarette advertisement on attitudes towards cigarette and e-cigarette use in adults located in the UK and USA: a cross-sectional study. BMJ open, 9(6), e027525.

    Publications


    Funding




    Interests

    Module Leader for PY6309 Applied Child Psychology


    I also teach Individual Differences at Level 4 and 5.

    Teaching