CRYSTAL SILVER

Biography

2019 - present: PhD Candidate (EastBio DTP, BBSRC), University of Aberdeen.

Research Overview

Social cognition: social agency, social interaction, virtual avatars, eye movements.

Current Research

PhD Project: Mechanisms of Social Agency

Sense of Agency, the phenomenology associated with causing your own actions and corresponding effects, is a cornerstone of the human experience. Social Agency can be defined as the Sense of Agency experienced in any situation in which the effects of our actions are related to a conspecific, whether that be because the effect of our action is their reaction, whether we engage in joint action, or whether their social presence influences our Sense of Agency. It is currently an open question how such Social Agency can be conceptualised and how it relates to its non-social variant because, compared to non-social Sense of Agency the concept of Social Agency has remained over-simplified and under-researched. Through a series of experiments, this interdisciplinary project seeks to comprehensively investigate the divergence of Social Agency from non-social Sense of Agency in relation to behavioural, eye-movement and neurobiological outcomes.

Funding and Grants

2019 - 2024. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council: Mechanisms of Social Agency, PhD studentship.