Dr. Tess Gregory

Room 222, Hughes Building Phone +61 (08) 8303 3055 Fax +61 (08) 8303 3770 tess.gregory@adelaide.edu.au

Area of Research

Cognitive Abilities / Ageing.

Expertise

Cognitive abilities testing.

Inspection time testing / theory.

Statistical analysis.

Psychology Research Interests

Main research interests are cognitive abilities, in particular speed of processing. Both my honours project and PhD project focus on Inspection Time, a speed of processing tasks devised in this School. I am interested in the relationships between IT, other speed tasks and the whole range of cognitive ability factors.

I am interested in the way these abilities develop in childhood and decline with advancing age. I am keen to study cognitive abilities in any age group and have experience administering cognitive tests to children (8 – 14 years), young adults and elderly adults (70+).

Research Project

As we age there is a decline in a range of cognitive abilities including memory and speed of thought. However, there are also large individual differences between people such that age per se is not a good predictor of performance on cognitive tasks. A “biomarker” is a task that can perform better than age in predicting functional age in the future. Functional age can be defined in a number of ways including independence of everyday living and cognitive ability.

This project investigates the predictive validity of Inspection Time as a biomarker for functional age. A group of 150 people will be assessed on multiple occasions to see whether inspection time is a better predictor than age of their independence of everyday life and their cognitive decline.

Recent Key Publications

O’Connor, T. A. & Burns, N. R. (2003). Inspection time and general speed of processing. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 713 – 724.