Dr Lydia Tan

Lecturer

Department of Psychology

E-mail: Lydia.Tan.1@city.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7040 8379

Overview and research interests

Dr Tan completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology and Linguistics at the National University of Singapore, before obtaining her MSc and PhD at the University of Essex. She then continued to work with Professor Geoff Ward at Essex for several years as a postdoctoral research fellow.

Following this, Dr Tan moved to City University London to take up her present position as lecturer in October 2006. Her research interests are in human memory, investigating memory performance over the short- and long-term using various paradigms such as free recall and immediate serial recall.

Topics of interest include the role of rehearsal and its relationship with recall, the determinants of recall and recall order, and the relationships between the many different paradigms used in memory research and what these relationships tell us about the mechanisms involved in our underlying memory system.

Selected publications

Ward, G., Tan, L., & Bhatarah, P. (2009). The roles of short-term verbal memory in free and serial recall: Towards a recency-based perspective. In A. S. C. Thorn & M. P. A. Page (Eds.), Interactions between short-term and long-term memory in the verbal domain. pp. 44-62. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.

Tan, L. & Ward, G. (2008). Rehearsal in immediate serial recall. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 535-542.

Bhatarah, P., Ward, G. & Tan, L. (2008). Examining the relationship between free recall and immediate serial recall: The serial nature of recall and the effect of test expectancy. Memory and Cognition, 36, 20-34.

Tan, L. & Ward, G. (2007). Output order in immediate serial recall. Memory and Cognition, 35(5), 1093-1106.

Singh, R., Yeo, S.E., Lin, P.K.F., & Tan, L. (2007). Multiple mediators of the attitude similarity-attraction relationship: Dominance of inferred attraction and subtlety of affect. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 29, 61-74.

Bhatarah, P., Ward, G. & Tan, L. (2006). Examining the relationship between immediate serial recall and free recall: The effect of concurrent task performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 32, 215-229.

Ward, G. & Tan, L. (2004). The effects of to-be-remembered and interpolated list length on free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 30, 1196-1210.