I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy and Psychology working on a UKRI funded interdisciplinary project called 'Agency, Rationality and Epistemic Defeat' in collaboration with the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna. The project aims to explore the origins of human rational thought by comparing how infants, dogs, and pigs form and revise their beliefs, specifically whether these non-linguistic populations have capacities for reflective belief revision.
Prior to this I completed an undergraduate degree in Applied Psychology at Heriot-Watt University and a masters in Child Development at the University of Stirling. Then staying at Stirling I went on to complete a PhD in developmental psychology supervised by Professor Christine Caldwell. My PhD research focused on development of socio-cognitive mechanisms proposed to underly distinctively human cumulative culture.
My research interests include social learning, cognitive development, cumulative cultural evolution, comparative cognition, and prosocial behaviour.
Article
Blakey KH, Renner E, Atkinson M, Rafetseder E & Caldwell CA (2022) Children transition from simple associations to explicitly reasoned social learning strategies between age four and eight. Scientific Reports, 12 (1), Art. No.: 5045. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09092-1
Article
Blakey KH, Atkinson M, Rafetseder E, Renner E & Caldwell CA (2022) Taking account of others' goals in social information use: Developmental changes in 3- to 7-year-old children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 215, Art. No.: 105325. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105325
Article
Development of strategic social information seeking: Implications for cumulative culture
Blakey KH, Rafetseder E, Atkinson M, Renner E, Cowan-Forsythe F, Sati SJ & Caldwell CA (2021) Development of strategic social information seeking: Implications for cumulative culture. PLOS ONE, 16 (8), Art. No.: e0256605. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256605
Article
Atkinson M, Blakey K & Caldwell C (2020) Inferring behavior from partial social information plays little or no role in the cultural transmission of adaptive traits. Cognitive Science, 44 (10), Art. No.: e12903. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12903
Article
Experimental assessment of capacities for cumulative culture: Review and evaluation of methods
Caldwell CA, Atkinson M, Blakey KH, Dunstone J, Kean D, Mackintosh G, Renner E & Wilks CEH (2020) Experimental assessment of capacities for cumulative culture: Review and evaluation of methods. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 11 (1), Art. No.: e1516. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1516
Article
Blakey K, Mason E, Cristea M, McGuigan N & Messer E (2019) Does kindness always pay? The influence of recipient affection and generosity on young children's allocation decisions in a resource distribution task. Current Psychology, 38 (4), pp. 939-949. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00260-7
Article
In the jungle of cultural complexity
Wilks CEH & Blakey KH (2018) In the jungle of cultural complexity. Evolutionary Anthropology, 27 (5), pp. 180-183. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21724
I contribute to teaching on Psychology undergraduate modules in Developmental Psychology and Animal Behaviour and masters modules in Psychological Research Methods.
I also supervise research projects and undergraduate and postgraduate research placements.
I was awarded Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in 2023.
