- A204, Portland Square, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA
- +44 1752 587866
- peter.m.jones@plymouth.ac.uk

Profiles
Dr Peter Jones
Associate Professor
School of Psychology (Faculty of Health)
Dr Peter Jones can be contacted through arrangement with our Press Office, to speak to the media on these areas of expertise.
- Psychology
- Experimental methods
- Quantitative research
Email publicrelations@plymouth.ac.uk to enquire.
Biography
Biography
Lecturer in Psychology
Programme Lead for Psychology undergraduate programmes
Qualifications
- BSc (Hons.) Psychology, 2001, Cardiff University
- PhD Psychology, 2005, Cardiff University
Teaching
Teaching
Teaching interests
My teaching interests are quite varied! I am module leader for the following modules:
- PSYC108PP: Psychobiological and cognitive aspects of health behaviour
- PSYC204: Applied Topics in Health and Cognition
I give lectures as part of:
- PSY155: Contemporary Topics in Social and Developmental Psychology
- I also take personal tutorials and supervise final year projects in Psychology.
Research
Research
Research interests
My research is concerned with basic psychological mechanisms, especially those related to learning. I am particularly interested in causal learning, and how well existing computational models of learning can account for behaviour. I am also interested in everyday phenomena that are governed by these fundamental processes, and I have published work on topics ranging from navigation to the acquisition of food preferences.
Research degrees awarded to supervised students
Completed PhDs as Director of Studies:
- Tara Zaksaite (2017)
- Stuart Spicer (2020)
Publications
Publications
Key publications
Key publications are highlighted
Journals
Articles
(2022) 'Theory protection: do humans protect existing associative links?' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition 48, (1) 1-16 , DOI Open access
(2021) 'Excitotoxic lesions of the perirhinal cortex leave intact rats’ gustatory sensory preconditioning' Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , DOI Open access
(2021) 'Similarities and differences: Comment on Chan et al' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition , DOI Open access
(2021) 'Representing uncertainty in the Rescorla-Wagner model: Blocking, the redundancy effect, and outcome base rate' Open Journal of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience 1, 14-21 Publisher Site , DOI Open access
(2020) 'Absence of cross-modality analogical transfer in perceptual categorization' Open Journal of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience , DOI Open access
(2019) 'Theory protection in associative learning: humans maintain certain beliefs in a manner that violates prediction error' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition , DOI Open access
(2019) 'The redundancy effect is related to a lack of conditioned inhibition: Evidence from a task in which excitation and inhibition are symmetrical' Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , DOI Open access
(2019) 'Uncertainty and blocking in human causal learning' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition 45, (1) , DOI Open access
(2017) 'Creativity and Blocking: No Evidence for an Association' AVANT. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard VIII, (Special) 135-146 , DOI Open access
(2017) 'The redundancy effect in human causal learning: no evidence for changes in selective attention' Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , DOI Open access
(2017) 'Familiarity-Based Stimulus Generalization of Conditioned Suppression' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition , DOI Open access
(2015) 'Evidence for concrete but not abstract representation of length during spatial learning in rats' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition 1, (41) 91-104 , DOI Open access
(2014) 'The fate of redundant cues: Further analysis of the redundancy effect' Learning & Behavior (Online first publication) , DOI Open access
(2013) 'Asymmetry in the discrimination of length during spatial learning' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 4, (39) 342-356 , DOI
(2013) 'Blocking and associability change' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 3, (39) 249-258 , DOI
(2013) 'Enhanced unblocking from sustained post-trial surprise' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 4, (39) 311-322 , DOI
(2013) 'Overshadowing and associability change: examining the contribution of differential stimulus exposure' Learning and Behavior (41) 107-117 , DOI
(2012) 'Excitotoxic perirhinal cortex lesions leave stimulus-specific habituation of suppression to lights intact' Behavioural Brain Research (229) 365-371 , DOI
(2011) 'Overshadowing and associability change' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes (37) 287-299 , DOI
(2011) 'Cue interactions in flavor preference learning: a configural analysis' J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process 37, (1) 41-57 , DOI
(2011) '"Cue interactions in flavor preference learning: A configural analysis": Correction to Dwyer et al. (2011)' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 37, (2) 188-188 , DOI
(2010) 'Two kinds of attention in Pavlovian conditioning: evidence for a hybrid model of learning' J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process 36, (4) 456-470 , DOI
(2010) 'Familiarity-based stimulus generalization of conditioned suppression in rats is dependent on the perirhinal cortex' Behavioral Neuroscience (124) 587-599 , DOI
(2007) 'Impaired processing of local geometric features during navigation in a watermaze following hippocampal lesions in rats' Behavioural Neuroscience (12) 1258-1271 , DOI
(2006) 'Further evidence that rats rely on local rather than global spatial information to locate a hidden goal: Reply to Cheng and Gallistel' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes (32) 314-321 , DOI
(2006) 'Potentiation, overshadowing, and blocking of spatial learning based on the shape of the environment' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes (32) 201-214 , DOI
(2004) 'Transfer of spatial behavior between different environments: Implications for theories of spatial learning and for the role of the hippocampus in spatial learning' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes (30) 135-147 , DOI
Presentations and posters
'Using immersive virtual environments to explore the blocking of geometric information during spatial learning'