Nayantara Ramamoorthy

Dr Nayantara Ramamoorthy B.A. (Hons), MSc, PhD

Lecturer in Psychology

Nayantara joined the School of Human Sciences as a Lecturer in Psychology in September 2022. She received her PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Cambridge in 2020, where her work investigated the attentional prioritisation of (another’s) eye gaze. Nayantara’s earlier work as a special educator for children with neurodevelopmental conditions influenced her research interest in individual differences in attentional processes. Post her PhD, she worked at Krea University, India where she taught undergraduate psychology courses and supervised undergraduate thesis projects. At the University of Greenwich, Nayantara teaches a range of undergraduate and master's courses in the areas of developmental and cognitive psychology.

Posts held previously

2021 - 2022 Visiting Assistant Professor in Psychology at Krea University
2020 - 2021 Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology at Krea University

Psychology

Responsibilities within the university
  • Module Leader for Cognitive Psychology & Neuroscience (PSYC 1119)
  • Interim Co-Module Leader for Current Issues in Child & Adolescent Psychology (PSYC 1045)
  • Module Tutor for Foundations of Psychological Science (PSYC 1161), Research Methods in Psychology (PSYC 0038), Applied Clinical Neuropsychology (PSYC 1068), and Advanced Developmental Psychology (PSYH-1028).

Recognition

Ad hoc reviewer

  • PLoS One
  • Nature Scientific Reports
  • Psychology & Neuroscience

Research / Scholarly interests

Nayantara’s research interests lie in attentional processes in humans, with a view to investigating which types of visual (e.g., gaze) stimuli in our environments we tend to pay more attention to, and why. She is also interested in individual differences in attentional and socio-cognitive processes (e.g., attentional (and corresponding socio-cognitive) patterns for individuals on the autistic spectrum).

Recent publications
  • Ramamoorthy, N., Parker, M., Plaisted-Grant, K., Muhl-Richardson, A. and Davis, G., 2021. Attention neglects a stare-in-the-crowd: Unanticipated consequences of prediction-error coding. Cognition, 207, p.104519
  • Ramamoorthy, N., Jamieson, O., Imaan, N., Plaisted-Grant, K. and Davis, G., 2021. Enhanced detection of gaze toward an object: Sociocognitive influences on visual search. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28(2), pp.494-502
  • Ramamoorthy, N., Plaisted-Grant, K. and Davis, G., 2019. Fractionating the stare-in-the-crowd effect: Two distinct, obligatory biases in search for gaze. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45(8), p.1015