Nicola Gregory

Dr Nicola Gregory

  • 01202 962373
  • ngregory at bournemouth dot ac dot uk
  • Principal Academic in Psychology
  • Poole House P252, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, BH12 5BB
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Biography

I graduated from the University of Sussex with a BSc (Hons) in Neuroscience in 2000. I went on to work as an IT engineer for several years before returning to study for a PhD in Psychology at the University of Exeter as a mature student in 2007. My PhD, supervised by Professor Tim Hodgson, looked at the influence of directional cues such as pointing fingers, eyes and arrows on eye movements and attention and how these processes can be disrupted after damage to the frontal lobes of the brain.

Between 2011 and 2013 I worked as a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Portsmouth and here at Bournemouth University's Centre for Face Processing Disorders, before taking up the post of lecturer in September 2013.

Research

Using eye tracking, my research examines the way we look at other people and how this allows us to understand their thoughts and feelings, an area referred to as visual social cognition. I'm interested in how looking behaviour relates to social cognition in both typical people and those with psychological disorders which affect social cognition, like autism, borderline personality disorder and social anxiety disorder. I'm also interested in how traits of such disorders which are present in the general populations influence how we look at and understand the social world.

I also conduct research into the influence of social context on eye movements when viewing social scenes and how eye movements and attention operate under dynamic, naturalistic, social conditions.

I welcome enquiries from potential PhD students in these areas of research.

Favourites

Journal Articles

Chapters

  • Hodgson, T.L., Gregory, N.J. and Facey, R., 2013. Follow Buzzy Bee: The effects of arrows, eye gaze and finger pointing cues on saccadic orienting in infants. In: Holmqvist, K., Mulvey, K. and Johansson, R., eds. Book of Abstracts of the 17th European Conference on Eye Movements, 11-16 August 2013, in Lund, Sweden.. Journal of Eye Movement Research 6 (3), 507.
  • Gregory, N.J. and Lopez, B., 2013. Potential social interactions modulate social attention in dynamic scenes. In: Holmqvist, K., Mulvey,, F. and Johansson, R., eds. Book of Abstracts of the 17th European Conference on Eye Movements, 11-16 August 2013, in Lund, Sweden. Journal of Eye Movement Research 6(3), 148.

Conferences

  • Turner, G., Bolderston, H., Gregory, N. and Thomas, S., 2025. The impact of ACT and CBT components on social anxiety and eye-gaze behaviour. In: ACBS World Conference 25-30 June 2019 Dublin.
  • Kuleli, D., Charles, F., Guo, L., Vuillier, L., Liu, C.H., Gregory, N. and He, X., 2024. Exploring Influence of Social Anxiety on Embodied Face Perception during Affective Social Interactions in VR. In: 24th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) 16-19 September 2024 Glasgow.
  • Antolin, J., Gregory, N. and Bolderston, H., 2019. Self-focused attention in social anxiety: a naturalistic eye tracking investigation. In: 20th European Conference on Eye Movements 18-22 August 2019 Alicante (Spain).
  • Moseley, R., Liu, C.H., Gregory, N. and Sui, J., 2019. Self-representation in autism; are autistic people self-focused, and why does it matter? In: Meeting of the Experimental Psychology Society 10-12 July 2019 Bournemouth, UK.
  • Murray, E., Chase, S., Gregory, N., Moseley, R. and Bate, S., 2019. Eye Movements in Developmental Prosopagnosia and Autism-Spectrum Conditions in Adulthood. PERCEPTION, 48, 102.
  • Gregory, N., Wellaway, S., Antolin, J., Sapsford, P., Bolderston, H. and Baron-Cohen, S., 2016. Impaired reporting of social awkwardness in autistic spectrum condition in the presence of implicit eye movement recognition effects. In: British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Annual Conference 31 August-2 September 2016 Barcelona, Spain.
  • Gregory, N. and Bolderston, H., 2015. Hypervigilance for faces, but typical gaze following in social anxiety. In: 18th European Conference on Eye Movements 16-21 August 2015 Vienna, Austria. Journal of eye movement research, 8 (4), 145.
  • Gregory, N., 2015. Emotional dysregulation facilitates emotion recognition independent of dwell time to faces. In: Experimental Psychology Society Meeting 8-10 July 2015 Lincoln, UK.
  • Bennetts, R., Gregory, N. and Bate, S., 2014. Characterising developmental prosopagnosia: What can subtypes tell us? In: Experimental Psychology Society 15-17 April 2014 Kent. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12 (67), 2467-2477 Taylor & Francis.
  • Gregory, N.J. and Lopez, B., 2014. Putting the "social" into social attention. PERCEPTION, 43 (1), 12.
  • Gregory, N.J. and Lopez, B., 2014. Putting the “social” into social attention. In: European Conference on Visual Perception 24-28 August 2014 Belgrade, Serbia. Perception, 43 (S), 12.

Posters

  • Moseley, R., Shalev, I., Gregory, N. and Uzefovsky, F., 2024. Empathic Disequilibrium as a Predictor of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury in Autistic and Nonautistic People.
  • Moseley, R., Gregory, N., Smith, P., Allison, C., Cassidy, S. and Baron-Cohen, S., 2023. Non-suicidal self-injury and its relation to suicide in autistic people: a test of acquired capability for suicide as a causal mechanism. In: International Society for Autism Research.
  • Moseley, R., Gregory, N., Smith, P., Allison, C., Cassidy, S. and Baron-Cohen, S., 2023. Mechanisms underlying suicidality in autistic people with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): testing hypotheses from the interpersonal theory of suicide. In: International Society for Autism Research.
  • Moseley, R., Liu, C., Gregory, N. and Sui, J., 2019. Self-representation in autism: are autistic people self-focused, and why does it matter? In: Experimental Psychology Society.
  • Moseley, R., Gregory, N., Smith, P., Allison, C. and Baron-Cohen, S., 2019. Self-Injury in Autism: Predictors, Perceptions, and Links to Suicidality. In: International Society for Autism Research Annual Meeting.

Others

PhD Students

  • Shel Silva, (In progress)
  • Georgia Turner
  • Jastine Antolin

Profile of Teaching PG

  • Advanced Research Methods
  • Research Project Supervisor Level 7

Profile of Teaching UG

  • Biological Psychology Level 5
  • Developmental and Applied Psychology Level 5
  • Project Unit Level 6
  • Final Year Project Supervisor - Level 6

Grants

  • Eye gaze and person perception in video conferencing and face-to-face job interviews (British Academy/Leverhulme, 15 May 2016). Awarded
  • Eye gaze in the job interview: Do differences in gaze between video conferencing and face-to-face interviews change interviewers' perceptions of candidates? (British Academy, 01 Apr 2016). In Progress
  • I can see you too! How does potential interaction with onscreen others influence social gaze? (Experimental Psychology Society, 01 Sep 2015). Awarded

Internal Responsibilities

  • Member, SC2AN Research Group
  • Member, Fusion 4 Students - Employability Working Group
  • Employability Lead, Department of Psychology

Public Engagement & Outreach Activities

  • Bournemouth University Active Vision Workshop (June 2016) (19 Jul 2016-20 Jul 2016)

Qualifications

  • PhD in Saccadic orienting to social and non-social cues (University of Exeter, 2011)
  • BSc (Hons) in Neuroscience (University of Sussex, 2000)

Memberships

  • Experimental Psychology Society, Member (2012-),