Dr Bert Timmermans
Senior Lecturer
- About
-
- Email Address
- bert.timmermans@abdn.ac.uk
- Telephone Number
- +44 (0)1224 273483
- Office Address
- School/Department
- School of Psychology
Biography
- 2019– Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor), University of Aberdeen
- 2013–2019 Lecturer (Assistant Professor), University of Aberdeen
- 2010–2012 Marie Curie / Volkswagen Foundation Fellow, Neuroimaging Group, UHCologne
- 2007–2009 Research Fellow, Consciousness, Cognition & Computation Group, ULBruxelles
- 2006 PhD in Psychology (Social Cognition), Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- 2000–2006 Research & Teaching Assistant, Social Psychology Lab, VUBrussel
- 1999 Master in Cognitive Science, Université Libre de Bruxelles
- 1998 MSc in Psychology (Clinical/Experimental), Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Qualifications
- Higher Education Academy Fellow2018 - University of Aberdeen
- PhD Psychology2006 - Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- MSc Cognitive Science1999 - Université Libre de Bruxelles
- MSc Psychology1998 - Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Memberships and Affiliations
- Internal Memberships
-
- Psychology Ethics Committee 2023–
- Psychology Education Committee 2022–23
- School representative to the Senate 2015–16 / 2022–26
- School of Psychology first aider (First Aid at Work SCQF Level 6) 2019–
- External Memberships
-
- ASSC Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
- ESCoP European Society for Cognitive Psychology
- Research
-
Research Overview
- Social cognition: social interaction, social sense of agency, action contingencies & interaction dynamics, gaze & eye tracking, social reward. Consciousness: perceptual awareness and metacognition, implicit learning, subliminal perception.
Current Research
Topics & Projects
Here's some of what's currently going on or will be in the near future. Undergraduates, prospective PhD students or postdocs, please enquire — people with skills in Python, Vizard, MatLab, eye tracking, or Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA) are especially welcome:
- Social cognition in interaction versus observation
- Relationship between Ascriptions of self- and other-agency in social interaction
- Social versus monetary reward in social cognition & motor learning
- Real-time gaze-based social interaction, analysis of interaction dynamics
- Subjective measures of consciousness and metacognition
Supervision
Current SInC lab members:
- L. Aldrich (PhD student, visual perspective taking & imagery 2023–)
- L. Weinreich (PhD student external supervisor, cyber-bullying and learning disorders, @LMU München with Gerd Schulte-Körne & Kristina Moll, 2020–)
- O. Gonzalez Sevilla (RA, sense of agency in social interaction, 2025, BT EPS Small Grant)
- P. Rooney (RA, sense of agency and memory for faces, 2025, Development Trust summer internship)
Former SInC lab members
PhDs/postdocs
- C.A. Silver (PhD, sense of agency in social interaction 2019-24, BBSRC EastBio DTP)
- M. Kasprzyk (PhD, behavioural effects of social interaction-related reward, 2016-23, School of Psychology PhD Studentship)
- A. Chaliou (PhD, psychopathic traits and social facial expressions, 2016-22, self-funded)
- C.J. Luke (Postdoc, Dual Interactive eye tracking w Virtual Avatars, 2016-18, BT Marie Curie Career Integration Grant)
Research Assistants
A. Johnson (RA, sense of agency in social interaction EEG, 2024-25); P. Mann (RA, sense of agency in social interaction EEG, 2024-25); W. Rocławska (sense of agency in social interaction EEG, 2023-24, Carnegie Vacation Scholarship); G. Rubidge (sense of agency in social interaction EEG, 2022-24, School of Psychology Summer Internship); A. Marinić (sense of agency; social facial expressions, 2020-22, BT Carnegie Research Incentive Grant); K. Kantee (sense of agency in eye gaze, 2020); G. Nopère (self-initiated joint attention & reward, 2020); T. Filipova (self-initiated joint attention & reward, 2018-19); L. Caruso (visual awareness and metacognition, 2018); T. Bennett (joint attention and cross-race effect, 2017); M. Cederblad (self-initiated joint attention & reward, 2015, School of Psychology Summer Internship); K. Bebus (Dual Interactive eye tracking w Virtual Avatars, 2014, School of Psychology Summer Internship); I. Barišić (Dual Interactive eye tracking w Virtual Avatars, 2010-13, Cologne, BT Volkswagen Foundation Grant); S. Schwarzkopf (perspective taking in autism, 2010-12, Cologne, BT Volkswagen Foundation Grant)
Funding and Grants
Principal Investigator
- 2025 EPS Small Grant — "Sense of agency in social interaction through reciprocal action timing" £10,000
- 2019—2023 Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant (RIG008270) — "Experiencing myself through you: Self-agency in social interaction" £10,000
- 2015—2019 Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (EU FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG) — "DUALGAZE: Social cognition in gaze-based interaction" €100,000
- 2010—2013 Volkswagen Foundation grant — “Being addressed as you: Conceptual and empirical investigations of a Second-Person approach to other minds” — co-PI with L. Schilbach (University Hospital of Cologne), T. Schlicht (Ruhr-University of Bochum), N. Steinbeis (MPI Leipzig) €317,000
- 2009—2011 Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (EU FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008) — "SOCIAL BRAIN: How does our brain learn to be social?" €169,000
Other
- 2019—2023 Participant to, and UK Management Committee Substitute for COST Action (CA18106) “The neural architecture of consciousness” (PI Kristian Sandberg, Aarhus University)
- 2015—2018 Research partner to PI Michal Wierzchon, Jagiellonian University of Krakow, on a HARMONIA grant from the Polish National Science Centre — "Cognitive and neuronal mechanisms of metacognitive awareness"
- Teaching
-
Courses
Teaching Responsibilities
Undergraduate
- Level 1-3 — Psychology Methodology curriculum coordinator
- Level 3 — PS3015 Methodology A [course coordinator; GLM/SPSS]
- Level 3 — PS3522 Methodology B [course coordinator; GLM/SPSS; research project supervisor]
- Level 3-4 — SX3504 Consciousness [course coordinator; Behavioural Measures]
- Level 4 — PS4019 / PS4038 Psychology Thesis [supervision]
Postgraduate
- MRes — PS5302 / PS5801 Basic & Advanced Research Methods for Postgraduates [R: ANOVA/Factor Analysis/Logistic regression]
- MRes — PS5017 Research Project for Postgraduate Students in Psychology [supervision]
- MSc Psychological Studies — PS5903 Research Project [supervision]
- Publications
-
Page 1 of 1 Results 1 to 47 of 47
Experimental investigations of social exclusion among adolescents with psychiatric disorders: A systematic review
European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, vol. 34, pp. 2631–2648Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-025-02687-9
- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/085d6554-adfb-479b-8117-af0172ffb2ac/download
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
The time course of Temporal Binding in social and nonsocial interactions
Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 326-341Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02540-1
- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/1ee7189f-511c-40dd-8320-82fc00fc30da/download
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
The time course of social and non-social implicit Sense of Agency
Working Papers: Preprint Papers- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2097214/v1
Social Agency as a Continuum
Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, vol. 28, pp. 434-453Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01845-1
- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/2a59421d-2f45-47cd-8d15-ee1526f735ed/download
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Alexithymic and autistic traits: relevance for comorbid depression and social phobia in adults with and without autism spectrum disorder
Autism, vol. 24, no. 8, pp. 2046-2056Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361320936024
- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/81a29380-ea42-462e-bd08-72e6176864cc/download
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Research Plan - How gaze is deployed in visual target choice and how we identify if like-wise choices are human- or computer-generated when observing and interacting
EPS Online 2020Contributions to Conferences: Posters- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GUQWJ
Motor response influences perceptual awareness judgements
Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 75, 102804Contributions to Journals: ArticlesMulti-scale coordination of distinctive movement patterns during embodied interaction between adults with high-functioning autism and neurotypicals
Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 9, 2760Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02760/full#supplementary-material
- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02760
- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/45aa8962-2042-4bba-b5fc-007db565a1e0/download
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
- [ONLINE] View publication in Mendeley
Responses improve the accuracy of confidence judgements in memory tasks
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 712-723Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000608
- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/f4b30b03-0427-4b7c-91c0-289f05014653/download
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Sensitivity to social contingency in adults with high-functioning autism during computer-mediated embodied interaction
Behavioral Sciences, vol. 8, no. 2, 22Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/bs8020022
- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/a431d1ea-64d8-4e28-b988-7273079efd72/download
Initiating Both Joint and Nonjoint Attention Improves Memory for Other Race Faces
Scottish Vision Group Meeting, 2017, pp. 5-6Contributions to Journals: AbstractsThe influence of dyadic gaze dynamics on joint and individual decisions
Perception, vol. 44, no. Suppl 1, pp. 263-264Contributions to Journals: Abstracts- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006615598674
How can we measure awareness? An overview of current methods.
Behavioral Methods in Consciousness Research. Overgaard, M. (ed.). Oxford University Press, pp. 21-46, 26 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersWhy we interact: on the functional role of the striatum in the subjective experience of social interaction
Neuroimage, vol. 101, pp. 124-137Contributions to Journals: ArticlesInvestigating alterations of social interaction in psychiatric disorders with dual interactive eye tracking and virtual faces
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 8, 758Contributions to Journals: ArticlesDifferent subjective awareness measures demonstrate the influence of visual identification on perceptual awareness ratings
Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 27, pp. 109-120Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2014.04.009
Effects of observing eye contact on gaze following in high-functioning autism
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, vol. 44, no. 7, pp. 1651-1658Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-014-2038-5
"Making it explicit" makes a difference: Evidence for a dissociation of spontaneous and intentional level 1 perspective taking in high-functioning autism
Cognition, vol. 131, no. 3, pp. 345-354Contributions to Journals: ArticlesNonconscious learning from crowded sequences
Psychological Science, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 113-119Contributions to Journals: ArticlesA second-person neuroscience in interaction: Authors' Response
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 441-462Contributions to Journals: Comments and Debates- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X12002452
Toward a second-person neuroscience
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 393-414Contributions to Journals: ArticlesSocial interaction builds the we-mode: Online comment on Gallotti & Frith "Social cognition in the we-mode"
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 17, no. 4Contributions to Journals: Comments and DebatesUsing dual eye-tracking to investigate real time social interactions
Contributions to Conferences: PapersTowards a neuroscience of social interaction
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 7, 22Contributions to Journals: EditorialsEyes on the mind: investigating the influence of gaze dynamics on the perception of others in real-time social interaction
Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 3, 537Contributions to Journals: ArticlesHigher-order thoughts in action: Consciousness as an unconscious re-description process
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological sciences, vol. 367, no. 1594, pp. 1412-1423Contributions to Journals: ArticlesIntrospective minds: using ALE meta-analyses to investigate commonalities in the neural correlates of emotional processing, social and unconstrained cognition
PloS ONE, vol. 7, no. 2, e30920Contributions to Journals: ArticlesSpontaneous goal inferences are often inferred faster than spontaneous trait inferences
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 13-18Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.06.016
Measuring consciousness: task accuracy and awareness as sigmoid functions of stimulus duration
Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 1659-1675Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2011.09.002
A non-verbal Turing test: differentiating mind from machine in gaze-based social interaction
PloS ONE, vol. 6, no. 11, e27591Contributions to Journals: ArticlesMeasuring consciousness: is one measure better than the other?
Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 1069-1078Contributions to Journals: ArticlesPartial awareness distinguishes between measuring conscious perception and conscious content: Reply to Dienes and Seth
Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 1081-1083Contributions to Journals: Comments and Debates- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.05.006
Know thyself: metacognitive networks and measures of consciousness
Cognition, vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 182-190Contributions to Journals: ArticlesExperiencing more complexity than we can tell
Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 229-230Contributions to Journals: Comments and Debates- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17588928.2010.497586
Optimizing subjective measures of consciousness
Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 682-684Contributions to Journals: Comments and DebatesHow unconscious is subliminal perception?
Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Gallagher, S., Schmicking, D. (eds.). Springer, pp. 501-518, 18 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersMetacognitive networks and measures of consciousness
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference ProceedingsConsciousness and metarepresentation: A computational sketch
Neural Networks, vol. 20, no. 9, pp. 1032-1039Contributions to Journals: ArticlesThe geographic distribution of Big Five personality traits: Patterns and profiles of human self-description across 56 nations
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 173-212Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022106297299
Discounting and the role of the relationship between causes
European Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 199-223Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] http://www.vub.ac.be/EXTO/Publications/pubint.pdf
- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.241
Patterns and Universals of Adult Romantic Attachment Across 62 Cultural Regions: Are Models of Self and of Other Pancultural Constructs?
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 367-402Contributions to Journals: ArticlesPatterns and Universals of Mate Poaching Across 53 Nations: The Effects of Sex, Culture, and Personality on Romantically Attracting Another Person's Partner
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 86, no. 4, pp. 560-584Contributions to Journals: ArticlesAre men universally more dismissing than women? Gender differences in romantic attachment across 62 cultural regions
Personal Relationships, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 307-331Contributions to Journals: ArticlesUniversal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: Tests from 52 nations, 6 continents, and 13 islands
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 85, no. 1, pp. 85-104Contributions to Journals: ArticlesLearning about an absent cause: Discounting and augmentation of positively and independently related causes
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference ProceedingsRules versus statistics in implicit learning of biconditional grammars.
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference ProceedingsRules versus statistics in biconditional grammar learning: A simulation based on Shanks et al. (1997)
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference Proceedings
