I feel honoured to have been awarded both the John Shepherd Prize and the Anderson Prize for the best thesis and highest performance in the MRes Psychology 2024-2025.
My thesis, "Conditioned Delusions", examined predictive processing during naturalistic reading using eye-tracking. We explored how reading behaviour changes when the text doesn’t match expectations, and how readers balance adapting their reading with updating their beliefs. It was a challenging but incredibly rewarding project, and I couldn’t have done it alone. I owe so much to the support and encouragement of many brilliant people.
First, thank you to my amazing supervisors: Anastasia Klimovich-Gray, Agnieszka Konopka, and Ben Tatler, for their patience and belief in me throughout the process. I'm also deeply grateful to the Bozicles Lab, especially Mirjana Bozic and Julia Schwarz, for supporting me since the very start of my academic journey. I feel especially lucky to share this experience with my friend Abbie MacAskill, the joint winner of the John Shepherd prize. Celebrating this recognition with her makes it even more special. Lastly, a special thanks to Thomas Alexander, whose guidance and good humour kept me sane through it all, and Marta Brzeska for being the best RA one could ask for.
This past year has only deepened my passion for research. I’m now excited to start my PhD, where I’ll be developing an analysis pipeline for combining eye-tracking and EEG during naturalistic reading. I’m looking forward to continuing to explore how we process language in real time - work that I hope will advance neurobiological models of reading and contribute to practical applications, such as better interventions for struggling readers.
Pepita Alex is now studying a PhD at the School of Psychology.
