- B230, Portland Square, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA
- andy.wills@plymouth.ac.uk
Profiles
Professor Andy Wills
Professor in Psychology
School of Psychology (Faculty of Health)
Professor Andy Wills can be contacted through arrangement with our Press Office, to speak to the media on these areas of expertise.
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Artificial intelligence
- Machine learning
- Computational neuroscience
- Cognitive science
- Bayesian statistics
- Big Data
- Experimental methods
- Neuroimaging
- Quantitative research
- Systematic reviews
Email publicrelations@plymouth.ac.uk to enquire.
Biography
Biography
Professor of Psychology
Personal website: www.andywills.info
Qualifications
B.Sc. Psychology (Soton), Ph.D. Psychology (Cantab)
Academic background
I became interested in artificial intelligence through an early interest in computers (I was paid for my first computer program at age 14). I studied psychology as an undergraduate (Southampton, 1990 - 1993) because of a (still-held) belief that psychology can inform the design of intelligent systems. A continuing interest in neural networks led to me studying for a Ph.D. with computational learning theorist Ian McLaren (Cambridge, 1994 - 1998). I continued my Ph.D. research as a Junior Research Fellow (Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 1998 - 2000).
Keen to secure a permanent position, and interested in teaching as well as research, I moved to Exeter University, where I became a lecturer (2000), senior lecturer (2005), and then associate professor (2006). In 2012, I moved to Plymouth as a full professor.
Key publications
(2013) 'Is overall similarity classification less effortful than single-dimension classification?' Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 66, (2) 299-318 , DOI
(2011) 'Effects of concurrent load on feature- and rule-based generalization in human contingency learning' J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process 37, (3) 308-316 , DOI
(2008) 'Processes of overall similarity sorting in free classification' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 34, (3) 676-692 , DOI
(2007) 'Predictive learning, prediction errors, and attention: evidence from event-related potentials and eye tracking' J Cogn Neurosci 19, (5) 843-854 , DOI
Teaching
Teaching
Teaching interests
Research methods, cognitive psychology and neuroscience.
I'm the lead author of the Creative Commons teaching materials Research Methods in R.
Research
Research
Research interests
My principal interest is the categorization of visual objects. This interest has also led me to work on the role of errors and attention in learning more generally. By some metrics, I'm in the top 1% of my field worldwide (the methodology for this calculation can be found here).
I'm also a strong advocate for open science, and the maintainer of a number of R packages, including catlearn (an open repository of learning and categorization models, with over 35,000 downloads to date).
Research degrees awarded to supervised students
2019: Angus Inskter
2016: Charlotte Edmunds
2014: Henrietta Roberts
2014: Fayme Yeates
2006: Fraser Milton
2005: Alice Welham
2004: Kazuhiro Goto
Grants & contracts
2017 - 2020: Learning from total failure (ESRC)
2010 - 2013: The Exeter Science Exchange (EPSRC)
2011 - 2012: confidential project (QinetiQ)
2011 - 2011: IED threat awareness (CDE, Defence)
2009 - 2010: Neuroscience of human associative learning (British Council)
2006 - 2007: Unsupervised categorization (ESRC)
2005 - 2007: From Associations to Rules (EC FP6)
2002 - 2004: Acquisition of polymorphous concepts (BBSRC)
Publications
Publications
Key publications
(2013) 'Is overall similarity classification less effortful than single-dimension classification?' Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 66, (2) 299-318 , DOI
(2011) 'Effects of concurrent load on feature- and rule-based generalization in human contingency learning' J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process 37, (3) 308-316 , DOI
(2008) 'Processes of overall similarity sorting in free classification' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 34, (3) 676-692 , DOI
(2007) 'Predictive learning, prediction errors, and attention: evidence from event-related potentials and eye tracking' J Cogn Neurosci 19, (5) 843-854 , DOI
Key publications are highlighted
Journals
Articles
(2023) 'Transfer of strategic task components across unique tasks that share some common structures' Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , DOI Open access
(2022) 'Pre-testing Effects Are Target-Specific and Are Not Driven by a Generalised State of Curiosity' Memory , DOI Open access
(2022) 'Effect of a context shift on the inverse base rate effect' Open Journal of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience 1, 22-29 , DOI Open access
(2022) 'Theory protection: do humans protect existing associative links?' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition 48, (1) 1-16 , DOI Open access
(2021) 'A Cognitive Category-Learning Model of Rule Abstraction, Attention Learning, and Contextual Modulation' Psychological Review , DOI Open access
(2021) 'The Benefits of Impossible Tests: Assessing the Role of Error-Correction in the Pretesting Effect' Memory and Cognition , DOI Open access
(2021) 'Similarities and differences: Comment on Chan et al' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition , DOI Open access
(2021) 'Representing uncertainty in the Rescorla-Wagner model: Blocking, the redundancy effect, and outcome base rate' Open Journal of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience 1, 14-21 Publisher Site , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Pretesting boosts recognition, but not cued recall, of targets from unrelated word pairs' Psychonomic Bulletin and Review , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Absence of cross-modality analogical transfer in perceptual categorization' Open Journal of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience , DOI Open access
(2020) 'A dimensional summation account of polymorphous category learning' Learning and Behavior 48, (1) 66-83 , DOI Open access
(2019) 'Theory protection in associative learning: humans maintain certain beliefs in a manner that violates prediction error' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition , DOI Open access
(2019) 'The effect of pre-exposure on overall similarity categorization' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition , DOI Open access
(2019) 'Dissociable learning processes, associative theory, and testimonial reviews: A comment on Smith and Church (2018' Psychonomic Bulletin and Review , DOI Open access
(2019) 'Selective effects of errorful generation on recognition memory: The role of motivation and surprise' Memory , DOI Open access
(2018) 'Learning from failure: Errorful generation improves memory for items, not associations' Journal of Memory and Language 104, 70-82 , DOI Open access
(2018) 'Automaticity and cognitive control: Effects of cognitive load on cue-controlled reward choice' Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , DOI Open access
(2018) 'Multiple Feature Use in Pigeons’ Category Discrimination: The Influence of Stimulus Set Structure and the Salience of Stimulus Differences' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition 44, (2) 114-127 Open access
(2018) 'Due process in dual process: Model-recovery simulations of decision-bound strategy analysis in category learning' Cognitive Science , DOI Open access
(2017) 'Initial training with difficult items does not facilitate category learning' Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , DOI Open access
(2017) 'Transfer of learned category-response associations is modulated by instruction' Acta Psychologica Open access
(2017) 'In Defence of Effect-Centric Research' Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 6, (1) 43-46 , DOI Open access
(2017) 'Progress in modeling through distributed collaboration: Concepts, tools, and category-learning examples' Psychology of Learning and Motivation , DOI Open access
(2016) 'Free classification of large sets of everyday objects is more thematic than taxonomic' Acta Psychologica 26-40 , DOI Open access
(2016) 'The Neural Correlates of Similarity- and Rule-based Generalization' Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 29, (1) 150-166 , DOI Open access
(2016) 'Attention and associative learning in humans: An integrative review' Psychological Bulletin , DOI Open access
(2016) 'Amnesic Patients Show Superior Generalization in Category Learning' Neuropsychology , DOI Open access
(2016) 'A Comparison of the neural correlates that underlie rule-based and information-integration category learning' Human Brain Mapping 37, (10) 3557-3574 , DOI Open access
(2016) 'Does Rumination Cause “Inhibitory” Deficits?' Psychopathology Review a4, (3) 341-376 , DOI Open access
(2015) 'Feature- versus rule-based generalization in rats, pigeons and humans' Animal Cognition 18, (6) 1267-1284 , DOI Open access
(2015) 'Combination or Differentiation? Two theories of processing order in classification' Cognitive Psychology 80, 1-33 , DOI Open access
(2015) 'Negative mood reverses devaluation of goal-directed drug-seeking favouring an incentive learning account of drug dependence' Psychopharmacology , DOI Open access
(2015) 'Feedback can be superior to observational training for both rule-based and information-integration category structures' Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 68, (6) 1203-1222 , DOI Open access
(2014) 'State trace analysis: Dissociable processes in a connectionist network?' Cognitive Science 39, (5) 1047-1061 , DOI Open access
(2014) 'Attention, predictive learning, and the inverse base-rate effect: evidence from event-related potentials' Neuroimage 87, 61-71 , DOI Open access
(2013) 'Cueing an unresolved personal goal causes persistent ruminative self-focus: an experimental evaluation of control theories of rumination' J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry 44, (4) 449-455 , DOI Open access
(2013) 'Modeling human sequence learning under incidental conditions' J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process 39, (2) 166-173 , DOI
(2013) 'Reinstating the Frontal Lobes? Having More Time to Think Improves Implicit Perceptual Categorization: A Comment on Filoteo, Lauritzen, and Maddox (2010)' PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 24, (3) 386-389 , DOI
(2013) 'Is overall similarity classification less effortful than single-dimension classification?' Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 66, (2) 299-318 , DOI
(2012) 'On the Adequacy of Bayesian Evaluations of Categorization Models: Reply to Vanpaemel and Lee (2012)' PSYCHOLOGICAL BULLETIN 138, (6) 1259-1261 , DOI
(2011) 'Unitization, similarity, and overt attention in categorization and exposure' Mem Cognit 39, (8) 1518-1533 , DOI
(2011) 'Effects of concurrent load on feature- and rule-based generalization in human contingency learning' J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process 37, (3) 308-316 , DOI
(2011) 'Interpreting the effects of image manipulation on picture perception in pigeons (Columba livia) and humans (Homo sapiens)' J Comp Psychol 125, (1) 48-60 , DOI
(2011) 'Representation development, perceptual learning, and concept formation' BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES 34, (3) 141-U41 , DOI
(2011) 'Simultaneous Backward Conditioned Inhibition and Mediated Conditioning' JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-ANIMAL BEHAVIOR PROCESSES 37, (2) 241-245 , DOI
(2010) 'Grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) show a feature-negative effect specific to social learning' Anim Cogn 13, (2) 219-227 , DOI
(2010) 'Syntactic transfer in artificial grammar learning' PSYCHONOMIC BULLETIN & REVIEW 17, (1) 122-128 , DOI
(2009) 'A comparative analysis of the categorization of multidimensional stimuli: I. Unidimensional classification does not necessarily imply analytic processing; evidence from pigeons (Columba livia), squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis), and humans (Homo sapiens)' J Comp Psychol 123, (4) 391-405 , DOI
(2009) 'A comparative analysis of the categorization of multidimensional stimuli: II. Strategic information search in humans (Homo sapiens) but not in pigeons (Columba livia)' J Comp Psychol 123, (4) 406-420 , DOI
(2009) 'The neural basis of overall similarity and single-dimension sorting' Neuroimage 46, (1) 319-326 , DOI
(2009) 'Long-term persistence of sort strategy in free classification' Acta Psychol (Amst) 130, (2) 161-167 , DOI
(2009) 'Prediction Errors and Attention in the Presence and Absence of Feedback' CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 18, (2) 95-100 , DOI
(2008) 'Processes of overall similarity sorting in free classification' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 34, (3) 676-692 , DOI
(2008) 'Use of multiple dimensions in learned discriminations' Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews 3, , DOI
(2007) 'Does maintenance of colour categories rely on language? Evidence to the contrary from a case of semantic dementia' Brain Lang 103, (3) 251-263 , DOI
(2007) 'Predictive learning, prediction errors, and attention: evidence from event-related potentials and eye tracking' J Cogn Neurosci 19, (5) 843-854 , DOI
(2006) 'Why are artificial polymorphous concepts so hard for birds to learn?' Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 59, (2) 251-267 , DOI
(2005) 'The outcome specificity of learned predictiveness effects: Parallels between human causal learning and animal conditioning' JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-ANIMAL BEHAVIOR PROCESSES 31, (2) 226-236 , DOI
(2004) 'Global-feature classification can be acquired more rapidly than local-feature classification in both humans and pigeons' Anim Cogn 7, (2) 109-113 , DOI
(2004) 'The influence of stimulus properties on category construction' J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 30, (2) 407-415 , DOI
(2004) 'Brief communication: the role of category structure in determining the effects of stimulus preexposure on categorization accuracy' Q J Exp Psychol B 57, (1) 79-88 , DOI
(2000) 'Tests of the ratio rule in categorization' QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY SECTION A-HUMAN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 53, (4) 983-1011 , DOI
(1998) 'Perceptual categorization: connectionist modelling and decision rules' Q J Exp Psychol B 51, (1) 33-58 , DOI
(1997) 'Generalization in human category learning: A connectionist account of differences in gradient after discriminative and non-discriminative training' QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY SECTION A-HUMAN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 50, (3) 607-630 , DOI
Reviews
(2012) 'On the adequacy of current empirical evaluations of formal models of categorization' Psychol Bull 138, (1) 102-125 , DOI
Chapters
(2019) 'Predictive History in an Allergy Prediction Task' Proceedings of EuroCogSci 03 Routledge 217-222 Publisher Site , DOI
(2019) 'Adapting to a Response Deadline in Categorization' Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society Routledge 938-943 Publisher Site , DOI
(2019) 'Is Competitive Learning an Adequate Account of Free Classification?' Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society Routledge 982-987 Publisher Site , DOI
(2012) 'Generalization Versus Discrimination in Machine Learning' Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning Springer US 1352-1355 , DOI
Conference Papers
(2021) 'SUSTAIN captures category learning, recognition, and hippocampal activation in a unidimensional vs information-integration task' Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 7-/-0/20217-/-0/2021eScholarship Publisher Site Open access
(2017) 'Due process in dual process: A model-recovery analysis of Smith et al. (2014)' 1979-1984
(2016) 'Memory for exemplars in category learning' 2243-2248
(2016) 'Modeling category learning using a dual-system approach: A simulation of Shepard, Hovland and Jenkins (1961) by COVIS' 69-74
(2014) 'Does incidental training increase the prevalence of overall similarity classification?
A re-examination of Kemler Nelson (1984)' Austin, TX Cognitive Science Society Open access
(2014) 'Machine learning of visual object categorization: an application of the SUSTAIN model' Austin, TX Cognitive Science Society 290-295 Open access
(2014) 'The effect of pre-exposure on family resemblance categorization for stimuli of
varying levels of perceptual difficulty' Austin, TX Cognitive Science Society 1018-1023 Open access
(2013) 'Implicit Learning: A Demonstration and a Revision of a Novel SRT Paradigm' 3829-3834
(2013) 'Impulsivity and Overall Similarity Classification' 3783-3788
(2012) 'Implicit Learning: A Demonstration and a Novel SRT Paradigm' 1185-1190
(2012) 'State-Trace Analysis of Sequence Learning by Recurrent Networks' 2581-2586
(2011) 'The effect of time pressure and the spatial integration of the stimulus dimensions on overall similarity categorization' 795-800
(2011) 'Working Memory Capacity and Generalization in Predictive Learning' 3205-3210
(2005) 'ERPS support attentional theories of associative learning' 171-171
(2004) 'Acquisition of polymorphous concepts' 1657-1657
(2004) 'Emergence of features in visual stimuli' 1654-1654
(2003) 'Speeded categorization: The effects of perceptual processing and decision-making time' 1218-1223
(2000) 'Categorization and the Ratio Rule' 994-999
(1997) 'Generalization in category learning: One and two category problems' 1088-1088
Presentations and posters
'CALM - A Process Model of Category Generalization, Abstraction and Structuring'