Qualifications

• 1997: PhD in Cognitive Science, The Open University
• 1985: BSc (Hons) in Computer Science, University of York

My PhD research work started out initially in the field of intelligent agents, but quickly moved into a deeper understanding of the psychology of the attribution of intelligence to computer systems and the like. The final thesis ended up addressing the topic of anthropomorphism, looking at when, and why, we attribute human cognitive qualities to things that are not human. In the process, this drew on theoretical literature from the fields of philosophy (of mind), psychology (especially developmental psychology, and theory of mind), articifial intelligence, and the Turing test. I ended up modelling these issues, and looking at the factors that influence our attribution of cognition.

Like others who were then in the field of artificial intelligence, much of my research since then has loked at human intelligence rather than the artificial kind, and how human learning can be enhanced through the application of all that great stuff we learnt as researchers in artificial intelligence during the 1980s and 1990s.

More details

• About my research
• About my career