Here you can find my current projects, where I am leading author, all are open access, or otherwise stated. Hyperlinks take you direct to pre-prints, publications, and data repositories.

Stage 1 Accepted Registered Reports:

Pre-Attentive Processing in Visuospatial Neglect: Burning Houses Revisited

  • The project seeks to replicate the pre-attentive semantic processing effect first documented by Marshall and Halligan (1988) under more stringent experimental conditions, and in a broad, representative sample while investigating whether semantic or merely physical stimuli differences are responsible for modulating the occurrence of pre-attentive processing in neglect patients.

Preprints:

nil.

Ongoing Projects-:

Development and validation of the Oxford Cognitive Screen - General Practice (OCS-GP).

This project is in collaboration with multiple national sites across the UK, including Dr Eugene Tang and Dr Nele Demeyere. Currently I am collecting some initial data to support the use of the OCS-GP. We are preparing funding applications for this project currently. Copyright is retained for all uses of the OCS-GP, and OCS-GP name.
- Status: Under active recruitment (January 2024)

Further development of the Multiple Errands Test - Home (MET-Home) in a UK English-speaking sample of healthy adults and stroke survivors.

This project, in collaboration with Dr Suzanne Burns (the creator of the MET-Home), will generate new data for the MET-Home in healthy adults and stroke survivors with the aim of generating new normative cut offs for use in clinical practice. Currently there are no standardised norms for this task, yet we know, with anecdotal evidence, that it is being used in clinical practice regularly.
- Status: In preparation (January 2024).

The Oxford COMPetency ASSessment(COMPASS): A Brief Supplemental Cognitive Assessment Aligned with Mental Capacity Criteria

Assessment of mental capacity is a critical aspect of clinical practice. Mental capacity is a legal concept defined in statute by the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (England and Wales). Current best practice consists of a qualitative interview to elucidate the ability to (i) understand, (ii) retain and (iii) weigh up the specific information at hand, and to (iv) communicate a decision. Capacity assessments often fail to align with the legal standards and are often contentious with low agreement rates. We developed and validated a new brief neuropsychological screening tool (The Oxford Competency Assessment; COMPASS) to assess the cognitive constructs aligned to the core abilities required for mental capacity. We aim for COMPASS to help decide best practice for conducting a full mental capacity assessment in light of identified issues. That is, if a memory impairment is found, clinicians know to adapt procedures to reduce uneccessary burden on retention of information during the capacity assessment.

122 neurologically healthy participants were compared with 117 participants with neurological conditions (stroke or dementia/mild cognitive impairment) on COMPASS performance. The validation included 56 control participants and 69 neurological participants who completed additional neuropsychological tasks including the MoCA. 29 participants were re-tested. 80 participants were compared against a mental capacity assessment on setting up a hypothetical Lasting Power of Attorney.

We found great reliability of the COMPASS, convergent validity analysis revealed low but significant correlations, and divergent validation was achieved. The COMPASS total score was similar to the MoCA in identifying impairment in mental capacity assessments, but neither were adequate to differentiate impairment in core abilities (i.e., understanding, retention, or weighing up).

Further research comparing the COMPASS to capacity assessments with differing complexity is necessary, as it may be that the decision focussed on was too complex for an initial investigation.
- Status: In preparation

Unpublished / Unpre-printed works

Essay on alternative facts in psychology

  • This was an essay I wrote in 2017 for my second year of my undergraduate when I just got into Open science. I uploaded this more as a personal joke as I had no idea about open science at that point and had only just stumbled into the state of psychology (i.e., it is on fire).