Christina Meier

Department: Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour
Discipline: Psychology

Project Summary

My PhD focuses on the role of associative learning in executive-control paradigms, which I investigate in comparative studies with pigeons and humans.

Supervisory Team

  • First Supervisor: Professor Stephen Lea
  • Second Supervisor: Professor Ian McLaren

Wider Research Interests

I am interested in all aspects of comparative cognition, and in particular in research that focuses on solving questions such as: How do animal acquire knowledge about their environment? Are animals able to reason? Do they understand that their behaviour can influence external events, and do they plan their actions in a way to achieve desired outcomes? Are animals creative? Can they produce new and innovative ways to solve problems?

Further within the field of cognition, I have a passion for inter- and intra-species differences in cognitive abilities, and the influence that living in close proximity to humans has on the cognitive abilities of animals.

Authored Publications/Reports

Meier, C., Lea, S.E.G. & McLaren, I.P.L. (2016) A stimulus-location effect in contingency-governed, but not rule-based, discrimination learning, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 42, 177-185

Meier, C., Lea, S.E.G., Forrest, C.L.D., Angerer, K., McLaren, I.P.L. (2013) Comparative evidence for associative learning in task switching. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Lea, S.E.G., De Filippo, G., Dakin, R. & Meier, C. (2013) Pigeons use low rather than high spatial frequency information to make visual category discriminations, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 39, 377-382

Lea, S.E.G., Poser-Richet, V. & Meier, C. (2015) Pigeons can learn to make visual category discriminations using either low or high spatial frequency information, Behavioural Processes, 112, 81-7

Meier, C., Lea, S.E.G. & McLaren, I.P.L. (2016) Task-Switching in Pigeons: Associative Learning or Executive Control?, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 42, 163-176