Miss Kelsey Frewin

Overview

Postdoctoral Research

At the beginning 2023, I started as a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Psychology at UEA, working with Dr Teodora Gliga on an ESRC funded project aiming to understand how access to language may shape conceptual and cognitive development in hearing and deaf infants. You can read more about the aims of this project here. This project is conducted alongside Dr Nadja Althaus, who is also at the School of Psychology at UEA, Dr Evelyne Mercure, from the School of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London and Dr Marie Smith, from Birkbeck College, University of London.

You can see my up to date research profile here.

PhD Research

I conduct my PhD research at the Cardiff University Centre for Human Developmental Science (CUCHDS) as part of the Tiny to Tots lab. I am supervised by Dr Sarah Gerson, Dr Chiara Gambi and Dr Ross Vanderwert.

I am interested in early language acquisition and the interrelation between language and motor domains during infancy. Specifically, I investigate early verb acquisition and aim to understand how experiences with actions may influence infants' verb understanding. To investigate these topics, I collect parent-report data as well as employing behavioural and neuroimaging techniques including eye-tracking and electroencephalography (EEG). Eye-tracking is a non-invasive method that measures where an infant looks when they hear or see something - I use this method to explore word understanding. Finally, I use EEG to measure infants' neural responses to language stimuli. EEG is a non-invasive and infant-friendly technique that records brain activity at the scalp. 

If you are interested in finding out more about this research or you would like your child to take part in studies conducted by the Tiny to Tots research lab, please email our team at tinytotots@cardiff.ac.uk or contact us on our Facebook page. 

Research Output

The 6th Lancaster Conference on Infant and Early Child Development
In August 2021, I presented a poster outlining my plans for two studies exploring verb comprehension during infancy. In this presentation, I describe a pilot online looking paradigm and an in-lab study using event-related potentials and eye-tracking. To hear more about these projects, watch my presentation below on Youtube.

Widening Access, Equality, Diversity & Inclusion, Outreach

As an openly LGBTQ+, first-gen science student, I think that making higher education and science more accessible is really important. Outside of my research, I volunteer in roles that aim to widen access to help underrepresented people enter higher education and improve equality, diversity and inclusion. I am also passionate about getting children and their caregivers into developmental science.

Widening Access:

Social Mobility Mentor – Psychology Career Mentor 2021
The Social Mobility Foundation is a charity which supports social mobility for young people. SMF provides opportunities, and networks of support for 16-17 year olds who are unable to get them from their schools or families. In this role, I mentor a college student prior to their UCAS applications. As a mentor, I help my student build knowledge about psychology and associated careers, support their university application, develop skills and learn how to network.
https://www.socialmobility.org.uk/ 

Social Mobility Foundation Futures Day, Psychology Speaker 2021
Providing an introduction to psychology career pathways for Yr12 students from low-income households and without family history of going to university.
https://www.socialmobility.org.uk/ 

Nuffield Research Placement Co-Supervisor 2019
The Nuffield Foundation provides research placements for students from low-income households and without family history of going to university.
https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

Athena Swan Gender Equality Steering Group Member 2018-2019
The Athena Swan Charter is a framework which is used across the globe to support and transform gender equality within higher education (HE) and research. 
https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/equality-charters/athena-swan-charter

Getting Kids and Parents into Science: 

Frontiers for Young Minds
I've previously published in Frontiers for Young Minds, an open access journal for kids and teens! Here, scientists summarise their published work for kids which is also reviewed by kids. You can check out the article I contributed to with my PhD supervisor, Sarah Gerson, and colleagues here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2019.00044 

Stepping into the Minds of Children
During my Research Assistant role, with my CUCHDS colleagues, I organised an ESRC Festival of Social Science event targeted at parents to help them learn about the most up-to-date developmental science coming out of our research centre. We organised a range of educational stalls based of different research topics and research groups and parents were able to take part in our quiz to win prizes! Details about this event can be found here: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/events/view/stepping-inside-the-minds-of-children 

Teaching Experience

Lead Postgraduate Tutor School of Psychology
Cardiff University
2019-2021

Postgraduate Tutor School of Psychology
Cardiff University
2019

Research Experience

Research Assistant School of Psychology
Cardiff University 
October 2021-March 2022 (part-time)

I am currently working with Dr Chiara Gambi to collect data on a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust funded project (with Dr Katherine Messenger) exploring children's incorrect predictions when listening to complex syntactic structures. In this project, we are collecting data from 4 year old children using eye-tracking. 

Research Assistant School of Psychology
Cardiff University 
2017-2019

In this role, I assisted Drs Sarah Gerson, Ross Vanderwert and Travis Proulx in conducting their current research projects that spanned different topics such as (but not limited to) face and emotion processing, mimicry, coding skills in children, motionese (i.e., infant directed actions), action understanding and cognitive dissonance/cognitive conflict. During this time, I collected data from infants and children of different ages (6 months to 7 years and adults) using a variety of techniques including eye-tracking, pupillometry, ERP and EEG, observation and parent-report measures. More broadly, I oversaw the day-to-day organisation of the Tiny to Tots research lab and laboratories as well as creating and managing the Tiny to Tots Participant Panel, a database of local families interest in taking part in developmental research. This database central to all current developmental projects conducted by the Tiny to Tots team. 

Qualifications

Summer School
Neurocognitive Methods for Infant and Toddler Research Utrecht University, The Netherlands
2017

Postgraduate Education
MSc Cognitive Neuroscience (Distinction) University of Sussex
2015-2016

Undergraduate Education
BSc Psychology (First Class Hons) Aberystwyth University
2011-2014