Shazia Akhtar

University of Hertfordshire | UH · Department of Psychology

Background Research into paranormal beliefs and cognitive functioning has expanded considerably since the last review almost 30 years ago, prompting the need for a comprehensive review. The current systematic review aims to identify the reported associations between paranormal beliefs and cognitive functioning, and to assess study quality. Method...

Background The associations between compassion, self-compassion, and body image are well established. However, there is not yet a compassion-informed measure of body compassion that can be applied to any aspect of one’s body. Method Items for The Body Compassion Questionnaire (BCQ) were derived from an earlier expressive writing study on self-comp...

Background This study describes the construction and validation of a new scale for measuring belief in paranormal phenomena. The work aims to address psychometric and conceptual shortcomings associated with existing measures of paranormal belief. The study also compares the use of classic test theory and modern test theory as methods for scale deve...

In two experiments we investigated whether older adult controls (OACs) and people with mild and moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD) benefit from false memory priming effects in subsequent problem-solving tasks. In addition, and unlike in previous false memory priming studies with older adults, we examined latency measures in the recognition phase. In...

We examined aging effects in reconsolidation and interference in episodic memory by reactivating memories for well-learned items in young and healthy older adults while controlling memory strength and the degree semantic processes contributed to memory. In Experiment 1, young and old adults learned pairs of real words and images to a strict criteri...

We investigated the extent to which activation of specific information in associative networks during a memory task could facilitate subsequent analogical problem solving in healthy older adults as well as those with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. We also examined whether these priming effects were stronger when the activation of the critical sol...

Memory experts, the police, and the public, completed a memory questionnaire containing a series of statements about autobiographical memory. The statements covered issues such as the nature of memory, determinants of accuracy, the relation of emotion and trauma to memory, and respondents indicated their agreement/disagreement with each of the stat...

Recent research has shown that false memories can have a positive consequence on human cognition in both children and young adults. The present experiment investigated whether false memories could have similar positive effects by priming solutions to insight-based problems in healthy older adults and people with Alzheimer’s disease. Participants w...

In a large-scale survey 6641 respondents provided descriptions of their first memory, age-at-encoding (AaE), and completed various memory judgments and ratings. In good agreement with many other studies, where mean AaE of earliest memories is usually found to fall somewhere in the first half of the third year of life, the mean AaE here was 3.2 year...

The perspective in which memories were spontaneously recalled, field (original perspective) or observer (see oneself in the memory), was examined for both recent and remote memories. Recent memories were dominated by field perspective whilst remote memories were dominated by observer perspective. Further, field memories contained reliably more epis...

Abstract: Narrative thinking takes place in the brain’s default network. Previously referred to as daydreaming or mind wandering, the central proposal of narrative thinking is that thought sequences, correlated with default network activation, are more structured, purposeful, and directed than previously thought. Narrative thinking features, among...

Metamemory is the experience and knowledge we have about our own cognitive processes and concerns the relationship between monitoring and control of memory processes (e.g., Nelson & Narens, 1990). This is particularly pertinent in memory impairment. For instance, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients who are more aware of their memory problems benefit...

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has been described as a memory deficit in the absence of other cognitive dysfunction. It can be thought of as a pre-clinical dementia. Memory impairment in this group is not as severe as in early dementia and thus learning is still possible. We were interested to see if errorless learning, a widely used rehabilitatio...