Dr Margaret Anne (Greta) Defeyter
Greta took her first degree in Psychology at the University of Essex. After completing an ESRC funded PhD she began working as a Senior Research officer at the University of Essex. She came to Northumbria in 2003. Greta is a Senior Lecturer within the Department of Psychology and is a member of the following committees: The Steering Group on Teaching and Assessment within the School of Life Sciences, the Steering Panel for the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, the Student Affairs Committee, and the Internal Communications Committee. Greta was awarded the first CETL Associate post within the University in 2005.
Greta is particularly interested in children's understanding of objects. Her work has focused on young children’s reasoning about artefact origins, functions and identity. Early work focused on young children’s susceptibility to functional fixedness and suggested that five-year-old children are immune to functional fixedness. Recent research projects have investigated the development of familiarity and recollection in young children; the role of design and convention in children’s artefact function judgments and categorisation; young children’s understanding of property ownership; and the effects of breakfast club attendance on social behaviours and cognition. She has received funding from the ESRC, The British Academy, Kellogg's; Pharmaton; and a Promising Research Fellowship from Northumbria University.
Greta is also a member of the Northumbria-Newcastle Developmental Psychology Initiative www.ncl.ac.uk/psychology/research/DevelopmentalResearch.htm
KEY RESEARCH OUTPUTS
Defeyter, M.A., McParlin, P., & Russo, R. (2009). The picture superiority effect in recognition memory: A developmental study using the response signal procedure. Cognitive Development, 24, 3, 265 -273. Impact Factor: 2.5
Defeyter, M.A ., German, T.P., & Hearing, J. (2009). A developmental dissociation between category function and function judgments about novel artefacts. Cognition, 110,2, 260-264. Impact Factor: 3.48
Haskell, C, Scholey, A.B., Jackson, P.A., Elliot, J., M. A. Defeyter, M.A., Greer, J., Robertson, B., Buchanan, T., Tiplady, B., Kennedy, D. O. (2008). Cognitive and mood effects in healthy children during 12 weeks supplementation of muti-vitamin/minerals. British Journal of Nutrition, 100, 1086-1096.Impact Factor: 2.76
Defeyter, M.A., German, T. P., & Avons, S.E. (2007). Developmental changes in information central to artefact representation: Evidence from functional fluency tasks. Developmental Science.10, 538-546. Impact Factor: 3.8
Defeyter, M.A. & McPartlin, P. L. (2007) Helping students understand essay marking criteria and feedback. Psychology Teaching Review. March Issue.
For a full list of publications please click here.
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