Victoria Williamson
Victoria Williamson completed her first degree in Psychology at the University of York in 2004. For her dissertation she studied the effect of background music on computer game performance. She gained an MA in the Psychology of Music at Sheffield University. In 2005 she was awarded a University of York Studentship to complete a PhD with Profs. Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch investigating the role of music in the working memory model. She won an ESRC Fellowship in 2008 allowing her to move to Goldsmiths, University of London to study the short-term memory abilities of individuals with congenital amusia.
She is currently a lecturer and co-director of the MSc in Music, Mind and Brain, and a postdoctoral researcher working with Dr Lauren Stewart on her ESRC first grant entitled "Fractionating the Musical Mind: Insights from Congenital Amusia".
Please visit my blog! music psychology UK
Teaching
Music Perception, Cognitive Neuroscience of Music, Research Skills, Psychological Approaches to MusicPresentations and exhibitions
2011: ‘How Musical Are You?’ exhibition at the British Science Festival ‘Senses Night’. 2011: BBC Radio 4 program about amusia (14 minutes in) and about earworms (21 mins in) 2011: Interview on '4Thought'. Watch again on the Channel 4 website or YouTube (UK only)2010: BBC 6Music film about the earworm project
2010: Earworm project interview on BBC Radio 4′s ‘Material World’.
Grants & awards
2011: SEMPRE Reg and Molly Buck Award (£2,500)
2011 : SCONET Award (£200)
2010 : British Academy research grant (£7,492)
2010 : British Academy and Guarantors of Brain grants (£1,300)
2008: ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (£81,948)
2005-2008 : University Studentship for Postgraduate Study (£36,000)
Papers presented
V.Williamson (2011) Why does music get stuck in our heads? Paper presented at Queen Marys 'Four Summer Panels' Series (London: May 2011), Westminster Psychology Seminar Series (November. 2011), and Edge Hill University Psychology Seminar Series (December, 2011)
V.Williamson (2011) Harnessing the power of music for public health promotion. Paper presented at SEMPRE conference on Health and Wellbeing. Folkstone: September 2011
V. Williamson, G. Cocchini & L.Stewart (2011). Pitch and space in congenital amusia. Paper presented at the Experimental Psychology Society London Meeting: January, 2011.
V.Williamson (2010). Harnessing the power of music: From safe driving to smoking cessation. Paper presented at the Department of Epidemiology and Public Heath, University College London: November, 2010.
V.Williamson & L.Stewart (2010). Musical memory: Insights from congenital amusia. Paper given at the 11th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition. Seattle WA: August, 2010.
V. Williamson & L. Stewart (2010). Memory in congenital amusia: Beyond a fine-grained pitch discrimination problem. Paper presented at the Experimental Psychological Society, London: January 6th 2010 and the British Psychological Society, Stratford Upon Avon: April, 2010.
V. Williamson & L. Stewart (2009). Memory in congenital amusia. Paper presented at the British Association of Cognitive Neuroscience. London: September, 2009.
V. Williamson, G. Hitch & A. Baddeley (2009) Comparing verbal and musical memory: A tale of two paradigms. Paper presented at the Experimental Psychological Society York Meeting. July, 2009.
V. Williamson, A. Baddeley & G. Hitch (2008) Memory for verbal and tonal sequences. Paper presented at the University College of London Institute for Child Health. December 10th, 2008
Posters
V.Williamson, G. Cocchini & L.Stewart (2011) Pitch and space in congenital amusia. Poster presented at ‘Music and Neuroscience IV’. Edinburgh, UK: June 2011.
V.Williamson, C.McDonald, D.Deutsch, T.Griffiths & L.Stewart (2010) Faster decline of pitch memory over time in congenital amusia. Poster presented at the 11th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition. Seattle WA: Auguest 2010.
V. Williamson, G. Hitch & A. Baddeley (2009) Comparing verbal and tonal memory: A tale of two paradigms. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the British Psychological Society, April, 2009
V. Williamson, A. Baddeley & G. Hitch (2009) Verbal vs. tonal memory: Sequence length and serial position effects. Poster presented at Experimental Psychological Society London Meeting, January, 2009
V. Williamson, A. Baddeley & G. Hitch (2008) Does articulatory suppression affect memory for tones? Poster presented at Psychonomics Annual Meeting in Chicago, November, 2008.
Selected publications
V. Williamson & L. Stewart (2012 - in press) Congenital Amusia. In The Handbook of Paediatric Neurology (Eds. O. Dulac, H. Sarnat, M. Lassonde). Elsevier.
V.Williamson, F.Liu, G.Peryer, M.Greierson, & L.Stewart (2012) Perception and action de-coupling in congenital amusia: Sensitivity to task demands. Neuropsychologia, 50(1), 172-180
link to abstract
V.Williamson, S. Jilka, J. Fry, S. Finkel, D. Mullensiefen & L. Stewart (2011) How do earworms start? Classifying the everyday circumstances of Involuntary Musical Imagery (Earworms). Psychology of Music - link to abstract
V.Williamson, G. Cocchini & L.Stewart (2011) The relationship between pitch and space in congenital amusia. Brain and Cognition, 76 (1), 70-76 - link to abstract
V. Williamson & L. Stewart (2010) Memory for pitch in congenital amusia: Beyond a fine-grained pitch perception problem. Memory, 18(6), 657-669. – link to abstract
V. Williamson., T. Mitchell., G. Hitch., & A. Baddeley (2010) Musicians’ memory for language and music in conditions of irrelevant sound. Psychology of Music, 38(3), 331- 351 - link to paper
V. Williamson, C. McDonald, D. Deutsch, T. Griffiths & L. Stewart (2010) Faster decline of pitch memory over time in congenital amusia. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 6, 15-22. - link to paper
V. Williamson, A. Baddeley & G. Hitch (2010) Musicians’ and nonmusicians’ short-term memory for verbal and musical sequences: Comparing phonological similarity and pitch proximity. Memory and Cognition, 38(2), 163-175 - link to paper
V. Williamson (2009) In search of the language of music. The Psychologist, 22 (12), 1022-1025. - link to abstract
N. Dibben & V. Williamson (2007). An exploratory survey of in-vehicle music listening. Psychology of Music, 35 (4), 571-589 - link to paper
V. Williamson (2006) Thank you for the music. The Psychologist, 19 (12), 743. link to paper
V. Williamson, A. Baddeley, & G. Hitch (2006) Music in the working memory model? In M. Baroni, A. R. Addessi, R. Caterina, M. Costa (Eds) Proceedings of the ICMPC9 (Bologna: Italy) pp. 1581-1590.
Book Reviews
V. Williamson (2010) Memory Rehabilitation: Integrating Theory and Practice (Barbara A. Wilson) New York: The Guilford Press, 2009. The Psychologist, 23(2), 127.
V.Williamson (2009) Music, Thought, and Feeling: Understanding the Psychology of Music (W. F. Thompson). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Psychology of Music, 37, 371-374 - link to paper