Adaptive Behaviour & Cognition

At the Adaptive Behaviour & Cognition (AB&C) Lab, we explore the adaptive capabilities of our cognitive system. 

Our research programme focuses on understanding how cognition unfolds during naturalistic behaviour in real-world contexts. In particular, we interested in how memories of different timescales form during natural tasks and, in turn, how these memories ultimately guide a wide variety of behaviours. We want to understand how our goals, expectation, and experiences proactively and dynamically shape our actions. We are further interested in how we select and prioritise information within memory in service of adaptive behaviour.

The lines of scientific enquiry covered by the lab include attention and perception, working and long-term memory, action and motor control. Critically, we are interested in how these cognitive mechanisms interact to support adaptive behaviour in natural settings.  

We collaborate closely with Sage Boettchers' Dynamic Cognition Lab and Kia Nobre's Brain and Cognition Lab.

An important part of advancing our research has been the development and utilisation of methods necessary to measure cognitive processes during unconstrained behaviour. We use behavioural testing, including eyetracking and VR. We also utilise neuroscientific methods, such as EEG and MEG.

Our published work has covered topics such as open and reproducible research practices, Virtual Reality, analysis approaches for MEG/EEG data, online screen-based and VR-based studies, and mixed-effects/multilevel models.

We are committed to communicating and discussing our scientific activities and ideas, and participate in many public engagement activities.

Below you can see a selection of videos that showcase some of our themes and studies.

We contribute to large-scale collaborative initiatives that strengthen the foundations for studying behaviour in naturalistic settings. This includes work on XR/VR research infrastructure and funding, open protocols for VR research, and shared data standards such as BIDS and Eye-Tracking-BIDS. We also work with the wider community to clarify key concepts, including consensus definitions. Together, these projects help make research on adaptive behaviour more cumulative, interoperable, and accessible across labs and disciplines.