Andy Bremner BA DPhil

The development of: object knowledge, spatial representation, body representation, multisensory perception, learning and cognitive control, in infancy and early childhood.

My broad research area is in perceptual and cognitive development in infancy and early childhood. I am director of the Goldsmiths InfantLab where we use a range of behavioural and physiological methods to study infant and child development. The specific research questions that I and my research group are addressing fall into three broad but related topic-areas:

Multisensory development

As adults we integrate the multiple signals from our sense organs into unified functional representations of the world and ourselves. However, the senses provide information in different neural codes. Also the relationships between the senses vary substantially with movements of the body, like when the eyes move in their sockets or when the body changes shape as it grows during development. These considerations highlight the challenge of multisensory integration for the developing human. I have been investigating the development of our abilities to link and integration information across a range of senses, including vision, proprioception, touch and taste.

Spatial representations of the environment, objects and the body in infancy and early childhood

I am particularly interested in the development of the ability to represent spatial relationships within external frames of reference (objects in the environment), and also within intrinsic frames of reference such as the body (locating the body and limbs). The first of these issues has been a substantial focus of cognitive developmental research since Piaget's seminal observations in the 1930s, and I have addressed questions concerning infants' and young children's ability to represent the layout of objects across reorientation, and also the ability to represent and locate hidden objects once out of sight. On the other hand, the development of the ability to locate stimuli with respect to intrinsic frames of reference (e.g. the location of the limbs and stimuli impinging on the body) has been relatively neglected. My colleagues and I have recently been tackling this topic in the context of a large ERC-funded grant: “Human Embodied Multisensory Development” (2009-2014).

The development of memory and cognitive control

Our multisensory representations of objects and the spatial environment emerge in the context of our developing cognitive abilities. I have investigated a range of cognitive functions in early life, including object memory in early infancy, cognitive control in toddlerhood. More recently, with colleagues from the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, I have been tracing the development of visual-spatial attention in Western and remote cultures.

Books:

Bremner, A.J., Lewkowicz, D.J., & Spence, C. (Eds.) (2012). Multisensory Development. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Leman, P., Bremner, A.J., Parke, R.D, & Gauvain, M. (2012). Developmental Psychology. London, UK: McGraw-Hill.

Holt, N., Bremner, A.J., Sutherland, E., Vliek, M., Passer, M., & Smith, R.  (2012). Psychology: The science of mind and behavior, 2^nd Ed. London, UK: McGraw-Hill.

Passer, M., Smith, R., Holt, N., Bremner, A.J., Sutherland, E., & Vliek, M. (2008). Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour. London, UK: McGraw-Hill.

Journal articles:

Cowie, D., Makin, T., & Bremner, A.J. (2013). Children’s responses to the Rubber Hand Illusion reveal dissociable pathways in body representations. Psychological Science, 24, 762-769.

Caparos, S., Linnell, K.J., Bremner, A.J., de Fockert, J.W., & Davidoff, J. (2013). Does local/global perceptual bias tell us anything about local/global selective attention? Psychological Science, 24, 206-212.

Naish, K.R., Reader, A.T., Houston-Price, C., Bremner, A.J., & Holmes, N.P. (2013). To eat or not to eat? Kinematics and muscle activity of reach-to-grasp movements are influenced by the action goal, but observers do not detect these differences. Experimental Brain Research, 225, 261-275.

Bremner, A.J., Hill, E.L., Pratt, E., Rigato, S., & Spence, C. (2013). Bodily illusions in young children: Developmental change in the contribution of vision to perceived hand position in early childhood. PLoS ONE, 8, e51887. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0051887

Bremner, A.J., Caparos, S., Davidoff, J., de Fockert, J.W., Linnell, K.J., & Spence, C. (2013). "Bouba" and "Kiki" in Namibia? A remote culture make similar shape-sound matches, but different shape-taste matches to Westerners. Cognition, 126, 165-172.

Caparos, S., Ahmed, L., Bremner, A.J., de Fockert, J.W., Linnell, K.J., & Davidoff, J. (2012). Exposure to an urban environment alters the local bias of a remote culture. Cognition, 122, 80-85.

de Fockert, J.W., & Bremner, A.J. (2011). Release of inattentional blindness under high working memory load: Elucidating the relationship between working memory and selective attention. Cognition, 121, 400-408.

Chamorro-Premuzic, T., Arteche, A., Bremner, A.J., Greven, C., & Furnham, A. (2010). Soft skills in higher education: Importance and improvement ratings as a function of individual differences and academic performance. Educational Psychology, 30, 221-241.

Bremner, A.J., Holmes, N.P., & Spence, C. (2008). Infants lost in (peripersonal) space? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 298-305.

Bremner, A.J., & Spence, C. (2008). Unimodal experience constrains while multisensory experiences enrich cognitive construction. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31, 335-336.

Bremner, A.J., Mareschal, D., Lloyd-Fox, S., & Spence, C. (2008). Spatial localization of touch in the first year of life: Early influence of a visual spatial code and the development of remapping across changes in limb position. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 149-162.

Bremner, A.J., Bryant, P.E., Mareschal, D., & Volein, Á. (2007). Recognition of complex object-centred spatial configurations in early infancy. Visual Cognition, 15, 896-926.

Bremner, A.J., Mareschal, D., Destrebecqz, A., & Cleeremans,  A. (2007). Cognitive control of sequential knowledge in 2-year-olds: Evidence from a sequence learning and generation task. Psychological Science, 18, 261-266.

Bremner, A.J., Bryant, P.E., & Mareschal, D. (2006). Object-centred spatial reference in 4- month-old infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 29, 1-10.

Mareschal, D., & Bremner, A.J. (2006). When do 4-month-olds remember the "what" and "where" of hidden objects? In M.H. Johnson, & Y. Munakata (Eds.) Attention and Performance XXI: Processes of change in brain and cognitive development. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Bremner, A.J., & Mareschal, D. (2004). Reasoning... what reasoning? Developmental Science, 7, 419- 421.

Bremner, A.J., & Bryant, P.E. (2001). The effect of spatial cues on infants' responses in the AB task, with and without a hidden object. Developmental Science, 4, 408-415.

Book chapters:

Bremner, A.J., & Cowie, D. (2013). Developmental origins of the hand in the mind, and the role of the hands in the development of the mind. In. Z. Radman (Ed.) The hand: Organ of the mind (pp. xx-xx). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hill, E.L., Crane, L., & Bremner, A.J. (2012). Developmental disorders and multisensory perception. In. A.J. Bremner, D.J. Lewkowicz & C. Spence (Eds.), Multisensory Development. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Bremner, A.J., Holmes, N.P., & Spence, C. (2012). The development of multisensory representations of the body and the space around the body. In. A.J. Bremner, D.J. Lewkowicz & C. Spence (Eds.), Multisensory Development. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Bremner, A.J., Lewkowicz, D.J., & Spence, C. (2012). The multisensory approach to development. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. In. A.J. Bremner, D.J. Lewkowicz & C. Spence (Eds.), Multisensory Development. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Spence, C., & Bremner, A.J. (2011). Crossmodal interactions in tactile perception.  In M. J. Hertenstein & S. J. Weiss (Eds.) The handbook of touch. Springer Publications.

Mareschal, D., & Bremner, A.J. (2009). Modeling the origins of object knowledge. In B. Hood & L. Santos (Eds.), The origins of object knowledge. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Published proceedings:

Caparos, S., Linnell, K.J., Bremner, A.J., de Fockert, J.W., & Davidoff, J. (2012). Does local/global perceptual bias tell us anything about local/global selective attention? Object perception, attention and memory (OPAM) 2012 conference report. Visual Cognition, 20(Suppl.), 1016-1020.

Begum, J., Bremner, A.J., & Cowie, D.A. (2012). 4-year-olds localize tactile stimuli using an external frame of reference. Seeing & Perceiving, 25(Suppl.), 41.

Le Cornu Knight, F., Longo, M., & Bremner, A.J. (2012). The categorical perception of tactile distance: A difference in acuity at anatomical landmarks. Seeing & Perceiving, 25(Suppl.), 43.

Quinn, K., Acosta-Saltos, F., de Fockert, J.W., Spence, C., & Bremner, A.J. (2012). Effects of a secondary task and working memory load on multisensory hand position. Seeing & Perceiving, 25(Suppl.), 58.

Cowie, D.A., Makin, T., & Bremner, A.J. (2012). The development of the bodily self: Children’s responses to the Rubber Hand Illusion. Seeing & Perceiving, 25(Suppl.), 87.

Bremner, A.J., van Velzen, J.L., & Rigato, S. (2012). Multisensory hand representations in early life. Seeing & Perceiving,25(Suppl.), 201.

Caparos, S., Ahmed, L., Bremner, A.J., de Fockert, J.W., Linnell, K.J., & Davidoff, J. (2012). Exposure to an urban environment alters the local bias of a remote culture: Object perception, attention and memory (OPAM) 2011 conference report. Visual Cognition, 19(Suppl.), 1303-1307.

Grants:

Bremner, A.J. Human Embodied Multisensory Development (HEMSDEV): Investigating the construction of human embodied multisensory experience in infancy and early childhood. European Research Council Starting Independent Researcher Grant (2009-2014). 1.2m€

Hill, E.L., Bremner, A., & Spence, C. Crossmodal representations of visual/tactual space in typical children and children with developmental coordination disorder. The British Academy (2006–2007). £7.5k

Mareschal, D., Bremner, A.J., & Spence. Crossmodal integration of touch and vision in infancy. The British Academy (2004-2005). £7.5k