Senior Lecturer
- About
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- 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
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- 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
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- ASSC Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
- ESCoP European Society for Cognitive Psychology
- Research
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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
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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
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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
