People

Professor Louise Phillips

Professor Louise Phillips
Professor Louise Phillips
Professor Louise Phillips

Chair in Psychology

About
Email Address
louise.phillips@abdn.ac.uk
Telephone Number
+44 (0)1224 272229
Office Address

School of Psychology
Room F23, William Guild Building
Kings College
Old Aberdeen
AB24 3FX

School/Department
School of Psychology
ORCiD
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Qualifications

  • BSc (Hons) Psychology 
    1990 - University of Edinburgh 
  • PhD Psychology 
    1993 - University of Manchester 

Memberships and Affiliations

Internal Memberships
  • Course co-ordinator for PS3011 Psychological Assessment
  • Steering group of Aberdeen Birth Cohort and Aberdeen Children of the 1950s 
  • Lead for the Aberdeen Ageing Well group
External Memberships

Vice-President of the European Cognitive Aging Society (EUCAS) 

Member of British Psychological Society

Member of Experimental Psychology Society

Latest Publications

View My Publications

Research

Research Overview

Better Ageing, Better Living.

Click here to tell us how you think we can improve social connections in later life.

 

I am interested in adult aging, in particular the effects of aging on cognition, emotion and social functioning. In the Aging, Cognition and Emotion Lab we address questions about age differences in communication, looking at how younger and older adults might differ in: expression and interpretation of emotional signals, the use of eye contact and gaze following in social interaction, understanding and empathy for others' mental states. We often find age differences in these aspects of communication - so this raises issues around why there are age differences: Generational changes in social norms? Changes in neurocognitive function? Differences in experience and motivation? And what impact might such changes have for everyday life in relation to intergenerational engagement, social relationships and quality of life? I also love getting involved in interdisciplinary projects on aging, looking at links between cognition, mental health, physical health, genetics, brain changes and social functioning. 

Research Specialisms

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Gerontology
  • Psychology of Communication
  • Affective Neuroscience
  • Psychology of Ageing

Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is HESA open data, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Current Research

  • Adult aging, social cognition and emotional skills
  • Intergenerational communication
  • Effects of degenerative diseases on social and emotional processing
  • Age, planning and prospective memory

Funding and Grants

2023-2025: Leverhulme Trust (Applicants Yong & Phillips). Theory of Mind in older adults: Links to fiction, cognition and social function. Awarded £188,476.

2022-2026: Dunhill Medical Trust (Lead applicant). Building interventions to improve quality of life in old age. Multiple PhD Studentship Award. Awarded £199,564.

 2018-2020: Newton-Ungku Omar Fund Institutional Links UK-Malaysia grant (Applicants Phillips and Yong). Social cognition and executive function in older adults in the UK and Malaysia: links to socio-economic factors. Ref: 331745333. Awarded £128,461.

2017-2021: ESRC (Applicants Phillips, Tatler & Henry). Adult aging and social attention: the role of cognitive decline and social motivation. Ref: ES/P005330/1. Awarded £500,492.  https://www.socialattentionesrc.co.uk/

2015-2018: ESRC/BBSRC.(Applicants Haggarty, Murray, Phillips, Staff, Hocking, Ferguson-Smith & Richards).    Imprinting methylation; early life influences and later cognition and mood. Ref: ES/N00048X/1. Awarded £446,636.

 

 

Teaching

Teaching Responsibilities

  • Level 1 Lifespan Development
  • Level 3 Psychological Assessment
  • Level 4 option course: Emotion and aging in social cognition
  • BM4301 The Science of Aging
Publications

Page 7 of 17 Results 61 to 70 of 161

  • Exploring own-age biases in deception detection

    Slessor, G., Phillips, L. H., Ruffman, T., Bailey, P. E., Insch, P.
    Cognition & Emotion, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 493-506
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

  • Global and Local Processing Biases in Healthy Ageing

    Agnew, H. C., Phillips, L. H., Pilz, K. S.
    The Scottish Vision Group (SVG) Meeting 2014
    Contributions to Conferences: Abstracts

  • Importance effects on age differences in performance in event-based prospective memory

    Hering, A., Phillips, L. H., Kliegel, M.
    Gerontology, vol. 60, no. 1, pp. 73-78
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

  • A meta-analytic review of age differences in theory of mind

    Henry, J. D., Phillips, L. H., Ruffman, T., Bailey, P. E.
    Psychology and Aging, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 826-839
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

  • Development of affective theory of mind across adolescence: disentangling the role of executive functions

    Vetter, N. C., Altgassen, M., Phillips, L., Mahy, C. E. V., Kliegel, M.
    Developmental Neuropsychology, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 114-125
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

  • The emotional eyewitness: the effects of emotion on specific aspects of eyewitness recall and recognition performance

    Houston, K. A., Clifford, B. R., Phillips, L. H., Memon, A.
    Emotion, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 118-128
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

  • Depressive symptoms in late life and cerebrovascular disease: the importance of intelligence and lesion location

    Murray, A. D., Staff, R. T., McNeil, C. J., Salarirad, S., Phillips, L. H., Starr, J., Deary, I. J., Whalley, L. J.
    Depression and Anxiety, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 77-84
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

  • Ongoing development of social cognition in adolescence

    Vetter, N. C., Leipold, K., Kliegel, M., Phillips, L. H., Altgassen, M.
    Child Neuropsychology, vol. 19, no. 6, pp. 615-629
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

  • Older adults have greater difficulty imagining future rather than atemporal experiences

    Rendell, P. G., Gaskin, S., Bailey, P. E., Henry, J. D., Phillips, L. H., Kliegel, M.
    Psychology and Aging, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 1089-1098
    Contributions to Journals: Articles

  • Perception of biological motion and emotion in mild cognitive impairment and dementia

    Henry, J. D., Thompson, C., Rendell, P., Phillips, L. H., Carbert, J., Sachdev, P., Brodaty, H.
    Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 866-873
    Contributions to Journals: Articles
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