Sophie Forster

Profile

I graduated from Royal Holloway University of London in 2002 with a BSc (Hons) in Psychology. After spending two years away from Psychology (working in publishing and teaching English as a foreign language in Spain ) I came to UCL in 2004 to study for an MSc in Research Methods in Psychology. I began working with Nilli Lavie during my MSc course and obtained 4 years funding for a PhD under her supervision. I am currently in the second year.

Research Interests

 I am interested in the factors that determine people’s susceptibility to distraction in daily life – both individual differences factors (e.g. in working memory capacity) and task-related factors (e.g. the level of perceptual or working memory load). I am currently working on establishing new laboratory paradigms designed to parallel forms of distraction common to daily life (e.g. by entirely task-irrelevant but highly salient images and sounds) and examining which of these forms of distraction can be reduced by manipulations in task load. I am particularly interested in investigating whether task-related manipulations can overcome the increased distraction usually experienced by highly distractible individuals (e.g. absent minded students or children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).

Publications

Forster, S. & Lavie, N. (In press) High perceptual load makes everybody equal: Eliminating individual differences in distractibility with load. Psychological Science.