Dr Damian Birney PhD (University of Queensland)
		Positions:   Honorary Senior Lecturer School of Psychology Brennan MacCallum Building (A18) The University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Senior Lecturer Accelerated Learning Laboratory Australian School of Business University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052

    Research Interests:

• Working memory and fluid intelligence
• Cognitive complexity
• Strategy development (and creativity)
• Foundations and applications of psychological measurement
• Development of flexible expertise
  

My research focuses on the investigation of human reasoning, learning, and problem solving, broadly defined. Three areas of particular interest are individual differences in cognitive abilities, relational reasoning abilities and working memory, and the philosophy of measurement.

Individual difference in cognitive abilities: The general focus of individual differences research is to map relationships between different psychological abilities and traits using correlational methods. It has been suggested that while correlational methods are effective for describing relations between different abilities, they provide little insight into the underlying processes¹. For instance, researchers have argued that (1) our understanding of cognitive (and personality) constructs has been limited by a “dutiful” adherence to a limited set of methodologies^2,3, and (2) that a much broader conceptualisation of abilities is necessary – that traditional psychometric tests capture only a small part of human capabilities^4,5. These, I believe, are legitimate concerns for individual differences research that might be addressed, at least in part, by broadening both theoretical and methodological paradigms.
            Working Memory and Relational reasoning abilities: My interest in relational reasoning abilities stems from my work with Graeme Halford⁶ and the work of other information-processing theorists⁷. These theories tend to conceptualise cognition from an experimental perspective which focuses more on mean differences in performance than on individual differences. Halford et al’s research investigates the nature and development of working memory as defined as the capacity to represent and process complex relations in parallel. My research has contributed to attempts to identify characteristics of tasks that influence relational complexity, and the person characteristics that mediate the capacity to deal with complexity⁸. While cognitive process analyses of tasks may provide useful accounts of the processes involved, experimental theories have been criticised for failing to sufficiently account for individual differences⁹. These, I believe, are legitimate concerns.
            Measurement: The theoretical interests I have briefly described are driven to a large extent by interests in psychological measurement. Understanding covert cognitive processes is necessarily limited by the inappropriateness, unreliability, and imprecision of our assessment methods – quantification is not simply deciding what to count. My philosophical interests in measurement stem from the work of diverse researchers such as Joel Michell¹⁰ and Ben Wright¹¹ who argue, albeit from different methodological paradigms, that researchers often only assume that the measures used to develop and validate psychological theories have appropriate measurement properties. Unfortunately, it has been argued that the nature of psychological research, particularly applied research, means that situations in which the quantitative properties of measurement can be directly assessed are rare¹². However, while there is a clear tension between the ideals of measurement and the practical constraints of psychological and educational research, this does not mean that we cannot aspire to the more perfect ideal.

Integration and current research: Individual differences and experimental approaches are often seen to be distinct investigative paradigms. However, I believe there are important advances to be made in psychology if we integrate these approaches. My primary research interests have increasingly focused on combining process (experimental) and individual differences theories of human reasoning and more recently in the development of flexible expertise.

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Last update 26th, August, 2009 webmaster@psych.usyd.edu.au