Amrita Bains

Educational Background

I earned a first class honours degree in Psychology from Aston University (2013-2017). Following this, I completed a Masters in Cognitive Neuroscience at Aston University (2017-2019) with a Distinction grade. 

Employment

Recently, I was employed as a Graduate Research Assistant at RHUL under the supervision of Dr Jessie Ricketts and Dr Saloni Krishnan. I worked on projects including the Orthogrpahic Faciliation in Classroom project examining how orthographic representations can aid novel vocabulary learning, and the Reading and Vocabulary Project (RAV) an intervention which will examine how reading can support word learning. Currently, I am a part-time research assistant in the LARA lab.

Following a small grant award from the EPS with Dr Joanne Taylor (University College of London) and Professor Adrian Burgess I worked as a Research Assistant examining how Fast Periodoic Visual Stimulation (FPVS) can be used to determine lexicality effects of written English. This project followed on from my Masters Dissertation.

I worked as a Research Assistant on the Aston Literacy Project supervised by Dr Laura Shapiro (2018-2020) at Aston University. This is a large longitudinal study which tracks childrens reading ability and development as they go on from primary to secondary school examining what skills are crucial when learning to read. 

Research Interests

My current research interests are how we can measure motivation for reading and from this how we can enhance motivation for reading. My PhD will focus on using a combination of behavioural and cognitive measures as well as linking this to neural bases of motivation and reward. To ensure that any findings can be applicable to the real world, we will be working in collaboration with The Reading Agency. With this I am a member of the Neuroscience of Communication Development Lab (N-code) at RHUL.