Rhianna Watt

I am a first-year dphil student funded by the ESRC Grand Union DTP. Supervised by Prof. Kate Nation and Prof. Dejan Draschkow, I will be exploring the cross-section between language, attention and memory in the context of reading and language development.

Previously, I was as a research assistant with the Oxford Brain and Cognition Lab, using a range of techniques from eye-tracking and EEG to fMRI and virtual reality, to learn about all things attention, memory and perception. In particular, I used virtual reality to understand how we engage in visual search in more realistic, true-to-life tasks, and worked on projects focused on 'premembering' - the notion that our long- and short-term memories guide our perception and selective attention, amongst other things.

I completed my undergraduate degree with a 1st in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford in 2022, and completed an MSc in Psychological Research, also at the University of Oxford, in 2024.