Antonia Hamilton's lab for Social Cognition
Introduction
When you see another person rooting through his pockets at the train ticket barrier, you can infer that he is looking for a ticket without words. This ability to make sense of other people's non-verbal behaviour is a fundamental component of social interaction which allows us to learn about people, to learn about the world, and to interact appropriately with others.
The Hamilton lab studies how non-verbal social interaction works and if people with autism have difficulty in this area. We are interested in the cognitive and neural systems which allow people to understand other people's actions, goals, intentions and mental states. This research has a strong theoretical focus on the basic mechanisms of non-verbal social information processing. Our work draws inspiration from and has an impact on research in social and developmental psychology, neuroscience, robotics and the philosophy of mind.
We carry out neuroimaging studies at the SPMMRC as well as behavioural and eyetracking studies of both children and adults. We also invite individuals with autism to participate in some studies, because we are interested in the different ways that different people process social information.
Our work is funded by the Waterloo Foundation and the the ESRC. We have also recieved funding from the British Academy and Autism Speaks. More details of our research and publications are available via the links on the left.
This website also includes a tutorial in Matlab for psychologists
Affiliations
The Hamilton lab is part of:
- The School of Psychology
- University of Nottingham
- The Perception and Action Team
- The Cognitive Development and Learning Group
- The Autism Research Team
- The Brain and Body Centre
The Hamilton lab leads the SNAP (Social Neuroscience and Psychology) journal club and maintains a blog/announcement list on that site.
Locate us:
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK
antonia.hamilton - at - nottingham.ac.uk
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK antonia.hamilton - at - nottingham.ac.uk