Stephanie Hartgen-Walker

I am a Teaching and Research Associate in the School of Psychology, where I teach and support undergraduate and master's students across a range of modules and programmes. I am also a doctoral researcher exploring extreme mental imagery, from aphantasia to hyperphantasia, and its implications for cognition. I am proud to collaborate with colleagues to form the School of Psychology's Athena Swan Self-Assessment Team. 

I have a strong background in research methods and extensive experience in teaching and employing a range of approaches, including focus groups with qualitative reflexive analysis, large-scale online behavioural studies, lab-based behavioural and neurosychological experiments, with quantitative analysis from frequentist and Bayesian approaches. 

I am also interested in research-informed policy, and have worked as a research fellow with the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology to produce a parliamentary research briefing on Child food insecurity and Free School Meals. 

Research Interests

Keywords: Mental imagery; extreme imagery; aphantasia
My research interests lie in the exploration of individual differences in mental imagery, with particular focus on the absence of imagery, known as aphantasia. For many, mental imagery is a ubiquitous feature of daily life, from trying to remember where you last had your keys, to visualising how best to rearrange your living room furniture. Imagery also serves as a component in several models of cognitive function and has a role in many interventions and clinical treatments. Thus, aphantasia is not only a fascinating phenomenon in its own right, it also has implications for our understanding of cognition and how we can manage when things go awry. 
I like to employ a range of methods to explore the imagery spectrum, including self-report, large scale online behavioural experiments, lab-based behavioural experiments, and neuroimaging with electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERP). 
Research software

• RStudio
• IBM SPSS
• Jamovi
• OpenSesame
• PsychoPy
• Qualtrics
• JATOS

• Experimental Psychology Society Postgraduate Member
• Higher Education Academy (HEA) Fellow

As a Teaching and Research Associate, I lead and support workshops and offer one-to-one support in our undergraduate and master's programmes with a heavy focus on research methods and statistics. My teaching interests and skills include:

• Experimental design, qualitative research (focus groups), and the research process
• Regression, multiple regression, ANOVA, Bayesian statistics, thematic analysis
• Science communication
• RStudio
• OpenSesame, JATOS

I typically teach on the following modules:

• PSYC411: Learning
• PSYC414: Relationships
• PSYC516: Applied Psychology
• PSYC519, PSYC719, PSYC520, PSYC720: Research Methods in Practice