Stephanie Hartgen-Walker

Academic profile

Stephanie Hartgen-Walker

Teaching and Research Associate (TARA)
School of Psychology (Faculty of Health)

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The Global Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Stephanie's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

Goal 04: SDG 4 - Quality EducationGoal 05: SDG 5 - Gender EqualityGoal 10: SDG 10 - Reduced InequalitiesGoal 12: SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production

About Stephanie

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

Teaching

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

Contact Stephanie

Room 305, Link Block, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA
+44 1752 588079