Dr. Louise Ewing joined UEA in 2015. She gained her undergraduate degree, Masters (Educational and Developmental Psychology) and PhD in the School of Psychology at the University of Western Australia. Upon completion of her studies she took up a postdoctoral fellowship in the Person Perception Node of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders. In 2014 she moved to the UK to take up a postdoctoral fellowship at Birkbeck, University of London investigating face-processing strategies in typically developing children, adults and individuals with Williams syndrome. In her research she uses behavioural techniques and electroencephalography to investigate the mechanisms of face and person perception – with a particular interest in how these skills develop in typical children and atypically developing populations, e.g., individuals with autism spectrum disorder, Williams syndrome and Down syndrome. 

Indicative Publications

Mares, I*., Ewing, L*., Farran, E. K., Smith, F. W., & Smith, M. L. (2020). Developmental changes in the processing of faces as revealed by EEG decoding. NeuroImage, 211, 116660

Ewing, L., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Farran, E. K., & Smith, M. L. (2017). Distinct profiles of information-use characterize identity judgments in children and low-expertise adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 43(12), 1937 – 1943.

Ewing, L., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Farran, E. K., & Smith, M. L. (2017). Developmental changes in the critical information used for facial expression processing. Cognition, 166, 56-66.

Ewing, L., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Farran, E. K., & Smith, M. L. (2017). Understanding strategic information sue during emotional expression judgments in Williams syndrome. Developmental Neuropsychology. 42(5), 323 – 335

Ewing, L., Caulfield, F., Read, A., & Rhodes, G. (2015). Perceived trustworthiness of faces drives trust behaviour in children. Developmental Science. 18 (2), 327-334

Dr Louise Ewing’s research is primarily concerned with the mechanisms driving the successful (and unsuccessful) development of face expertise in typical and atypical populations, e.g., autism spectrum disorder, Williams syndrome. Current research topics include: the impact of strategic information use during face judgments (i.e., what is the most critical information for decisions about things like identity, expression, gender); the emergence of face-related social attributions in early childhood (e.g., evaluations of trustworthiness, attractiveness); individual differences in social motivation and the development of person perception expertise; adaptive coding of face identity and expression; the own-race bias in face perception; differences in the perception of real vs computer generated faces; neural correlates of specialist face processing in Williams syndrome (EEG).

Get in touch if you'd like to talk about working towards a PhD or would like to gain some research experience!

Lecturer: Introduction to Psychology (1^st Year)

Lecturer: Psychology: Neurodevelopmental Disorders (3rd Year)

Project Supervisor:  Research Project (3rd Year)

Project Supervisor: Dissertation (Masters)

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Director