Dr Annie Scudds
Senior Lecturer; Programme Leader for Applied Psychology MSc
Annie is an experimental psychologist. For most of her career, her research has focused on the factors influencing people’s visual representations of their environment. More specifically, she has looked at the visual impact of different variables on people’s perception, with a particular focus on consumer packaging evaluation. More recently, she has been looking at factors influencing people’s healthy food choices. Her research now mainly focuses on the impact physical activity on psychological well-being and on cognitive functions.
Annie is the Module Leader for the core BPS topic ‘Understanding the Mind’ (PS5017), the postgraduate modules ‘Advanced Skills for Research and Practice’ (PS7303), ‘Applications of Psychology in the Real World’ (PS7607) and ‘Applied Psychology Dissertation’ (PS7601)’. She also teaches across many other areas of Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes, including cognitive psychology, research methods, consumer psychology and occupational psychology. She supervises dissertations at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as MRes and PhD students.
Annie joined the School of Psychology in January 2015. Prior to joining the University, she was a researcher in Consumer Science at Unilever R&D exploring aspects of consumer visual perception. Following her MSc in Occupational Psychology, she was part of a government initiative (Pathways) designed to help people receiving health related benefits return to sustainable employment. She then joined Paravizion Ltd, a retail visualisation company, as their Research Director, where she led consumer packaging research projects. More recently, Annie was the Research and Development co-ordinator for Food Dudes Health, a social enterprise delivering behaviour change programmes in primary schools and nurseries designed to increase healthy eating and physical activity.
Annie is the Programme Leader of the Masters in Applied Psychology and is also the Career and Employment Link Tutor for the Department. She is a member of the Marketing and the Ethics committees and is also part the Equality and Diversity Team. She is a member of the Employability Working Group and is an active member of the Open and Experience days’ teams.
At Undergraduate level, Annie is the Module Leader for Understanding the Mind (PS5017). She is also part of the teaching teams for Using your Psychology (PS5008) and Topics in Applied Psychology (PS4021). Annie also supervises student dissertation research projects at undergraduate (PS6001) and postgraduate levels (PS7308 & PS7112). She also supervises MRes and PhD students. At postgraduate level, Annie is the module leader for ‘Advanced Skills for Research and Practice’ (PS7303), ‘Applications of Psychology in the Real World’ (PS7607) and ‘Applied Psychology Dissertation’ (PS7601)’. She also teaches on Cognitive Psychology (for Conversion) module (PS7312).
Annie’s current research focuses on the higher cognitive functions influencing visual perception and categorisation. She is also interested in consumer psychology, more specifically in packaging perception. More recently, Annie has been studying the potential benefits physical activity can have on both psychological well-being (e.g. stress, anxiety, depression, fatigue and work rumination) and cognitive functions (e.g. memory and visual acuity).
Annie uses a range of quantitative methods, with an emphasis on experimental approaches using artificial stimuli to enable the full control of the visual environment used in her experiments.
Vaughan, S., Holt, G. A., Scudds, A., Wilkinson, H., & Lasikiewicz, N. (2022). Moving to remote working: a guide for traditional lab-based experiments. SAGE Research Methods: Doing Research Online. https://methods.sagepub.com/case/remote-working-guide-traditional-lab-ba...
Scudds, A., Gosselin, F., Dupuis-Roy, N. & McCabe, E. (2007). What do consumers pay attention to in a stain? Internal Science and Technology Report Unilever research and Development Port Sunlight. PS 07 0056.
Archambault, A*. (2001). Is this fabric wrinkled?: Examining the perceptual features involved in wrinkling assessment. Internal Science and Technology Report Unilever Research and Development port Sunlight. PS 01 0641.
Archambault, A*., Gosselin, F. & Schyns, P. G. (2000). A natural bias can determine basic-level preference in recognition. Perception, 29, ECVP Abstract Supplement.
Archambault, A*., Gosselin, F. & Schyns, P. G. (2000). A natural bias for the basic-level? Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 60-65). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Archambault, A*, O'Donnell, C & Schyns, P.G. (1999). Blind to object changes: Learning the same object at different levels of categorization modifies its perception. Psychological Science, 10, 3, 249-255.
Archambault, A*., Gosselin, F. & Schyns, P. G. (1999). The interaction of size and level of categorisation. Perception, 28, ECVP Abstract Supplement.
Archambault, A*. & Schyns, P. G. (1998). Object perception and object categorisation. Perception, 27, ECVP Abstract Supplement.
O'Donnell, C., Archambault, A*. & Schyns, P. G. (1998). Basic-level and subordinate-level object categorisation affect induced change blindness (ICB). Perception, 27, ECVP Abstract Supplement.
Archambault, A* & Schyns, P. G. (1998). Categorization Changes Object Perception. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 88-93). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum
Archambault, A*. & Schyns, P. G. (1996). The time course of similarity judgement. Perception, 25, ECVP Abstract Supplement.
Book Chapters
Larochelle, S., Cousineau, D. & Archambault, A*. (2006). The role of definitions in categorization and similarity judgments. In C. Lefebvre et H. Cohen (Eds.) Handbook of categorization in cognitive science, Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Gosselin, F., Archambault, A*. & Schyns, P. G. (2001). Interactions between taxonomic knowledge, categorization, and perception. In U. Hahn & M. Ramscar (Eds.) Similarity and categorization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Published under my maiden name
Annie is a chartered psychologist of the British Psychological Society and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She obtained her undergraduate degree at the University of Montréal, completing her final year at the University of Provence Aix-Marseille I in France. Subsequently, she completed an MSc in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Montréal before being awarded her PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Glasgow. More recently, Annie also completed an MSc in Occupational Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University.