TCD Psychologist Appointed a Fellow of US Association for Psychological Science

Posted on: 28 June 2013

TCD psychologist Professor Ian Robertson has been appointed a Fellow of the American Association for Psychological Science. The fellowship is in recognition of his “sustained and outstanding distinguished contributions to psychological science”.

Professor Robertson holds the Chair in Psychology at Trinity College and was the founding director of Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (TCIN), a multi-disciplinary research collaboration where psychologists, geneticists, biochemists, engineers, physicians, psychiatrists, physiologists and physicists work in close collaboration in a single building to solve some of the most pressing problems of human health. 

Professor Robertson’s research on the human brain’s attention systems has led to a number of entirely new ways of measuring how humans pay – or fail to pay – attention. It has also resulted in novel methods for improving cognitive and emotional function in people with a range of psychological and neurological conditions including traumatic brain injury, stroke, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia and ageing, among others.

His work has been published in over 200 papers in journals such as Nature, Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Neuroscience and Neuropsychologia, and in several books, including the leading international textbook on cognitive rehabilitation, which he co-edited with Canadian colleagues Don Stuss and Gordon Winocur.   

Professor Robertson is also known for his popular science writing, most recently through his book The Winner Effect and his blog, http://www.thewinnereffect.com.  He is only the second Irish Fellow of the APS, the first being Professor of Experimental Brain Research and Director of the Institute of Neuroscience Shane O’Mara.

Speaking in response to the appointment, Professor Robertson commented: “I am delighted to receive this award from the Association for Psychological Science.  Trinity College has offered me a unique opportunity to put into reality my ambitions for psychological science and I would like to pay tribute to the fantastic collaborators and colleagues in Trinity, and previously in Cambridge, who made this award possible.”

“TCIN mirrors my own approach to human behaviour, which is based on the belief that a thought is as ‘real’ as an atom.  In other words, progress in understanding the brain and human behaviour can only come by mutual respect and intense collaboration among scientists carrying out rigorous research across all levels of analysis in human behaviour, from social and economic relationships, through psychological processes, to cellular, molecular, and sub-molecular levels of analysis.”