Dr Merryn Constable

Assistant Professor

Department: Psychology

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

One astonishing feature of human information processing is humans' ability to seamlessly highlight aspects of a situation that are most relevant for action and cognition. A key aspect of this ability is to relate perceived information to oneself and to other agents. The goal of Dr. Constable's research is to understand the attribution of perceived information to self and other, and what this attribution entails for subsequent information processing. She is particularly interested in how the relationship between self and other influences interactions with objects and other agents within the context of a social environment and what this means for human performance. For example, how do evolutionarily based or modern social conventions influence the distinction and relationship between self and other and how do such distinctions influence cognition and action.

Her previous work has centred on three themes:

Me - how the individual self impacts cognition and human interactions.
We - how the collective self influences cognition and human interactions.
They - how consideration of others influences cognition and human interactions.

Most recently, she has been working on applied interdisciplinary projects looking at how to optimise performance in healthcare settings, in human-robot interactions, and with human augmentation.

She has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Toronto (Action and Attention Lab, Visual Cognition Lab) and the Central European University (Social Mind and Body Group). She completed her PhD at the University of Queensland.

Dr. Constable's work has been supported by DSTL, The Royal Society, and the Australian Government (Department of Education and Training).

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Chimpanzees demonstrate a behavioural signature of human joint action, Constable, M., Mcewen, E., Knoblich, G., Gibson, C., Addison, A., Nestor, S., Call, J. 1 May 2024, In: Cognition
Maximising Coefficiency of Human-Robot Handovers Through Reinforcement Learning, Lagomarsino, M., Lorenzini, M., Constable, M., De Momi, E., Becchio, C., Ajoudani, A. 1 Aug 2023, In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
Ownership status influences the degree of joint facilitatory behavior, Constable, M., Bayliss, A., Tipper, S., Spaniol, A., Pratt, J., Welsh, T. 1 Oct 2016, In: Psychological Science
Enhancing surgical performance in cardiothoracic surgery with innovations from computer vision and artificial intelligence: a narrative review, Constable, M., Shum, H., Clark, S. 14 Feb 2024, In: Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery
Advancing healthcare practice and education via data sharing: demonstrating the utility of open data by training an artificial intelligence model to assess cardiopulmonary resuscitation skills, Constable, M., Zhang, F., Conner, A., Monk, D., Rajsic, J., Ford, C., Park, L., Platt, A., Porteous, D., Grierson, L., Shum, H. 1 Feb 2025, In: Advances in Health Sciences Education

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Invited talk: On the basketball court: How territorial context impacts information processing and responses 2024
Invited talk: On joint action facilitation in robot-human handovers 2023
Invited talk: Considering ownership and territory through the lens of social interactions 2023
Editorial work: BMC psychology (Journal) 2023
Visiting an external academic institution: Italian Institute of Technology 2022
Invited talk: Cognition in social spaces and Career Experiences as an Early Career Researcher 2022
Invited talk: Joint Action Planning in Handover Tasks 2022
Publication Peer-review: PLoS One (Journal) 2022
Invited talk: Cognition in social spaces 2021
Invited talk: Self-Prioritisation as a function of context 2019