Professor Robert Logie (PhD FRSE FBPsS FPsyS)

Professor Emeritus

  • Psychology
  • School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences

Contact details

Availability

  • Prof Logie has now retired, so is not available for student appointments but remains active in research.

Background

Brief biography

Professor Logie obtained his BSc in Psychology from the University of Aberdeen, UK in 1976, and his PhD in Psychology from University College London in 1981. From 1980-1986 he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Medical Research Council Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge, UK, and from 1987-2003 he returned to the Psychology Department at the University of Aberdeen as a lecturer, then senior lecturer, then Anderson Professor and Head of Department (1997-2002). From 1995-2006, he was also adjunct Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bergen, Norway. From 2004-2023 he was Professor of Human Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, UK.  His teaching and research are in the area of human memory and how it changes across the adult lifespan, with a special interest in working memory. In 2015 he was Chair of the European Research Council panel for Human Mind and Its Complexity, was the first non north-American to be elected Chair of the Governing Board of the Psychonomic Society, and was made an Honorary Life Member of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology.  In 2021 he was appointed as  member of the Psychology, Psychiatry, and Neuroscience panel for the UK-wide evaluation of research, the REF. In 2022 he was elected by the UK Experimental Psychology Society as the 51st Bartlett Lecturer for lifetime contributions to Experimental Psychology. He retired from the University of Edinburgh on 31st December 2023, but as Professor Emeritus he remains active in research, academic publications, and research evaluation.

Representative publications

(Total >300)

  1. Logie, R.H., Wen, Z., Gathercole, S., Cowan, N., Engle, R. (Eds.). (2023). Memory in Science for Society: There is nothing as practical as a good theory. Oxford University Press. (pp 437). ISBN 978-0-19-284906-9
  2. Logie, R.H., Camos, V., & Cowan, N. (Eds.) (2021). Working Memory: State of the Science. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. (pp437).  ISBN 978-0-19-884228-6
  3. Logie, R.H., Brockmole, J.R., Maylor, E.A., Smith-Ray, R. and Doherty, J.M. (2020). Working Memory, Prospective Memory, and Self-Reported Everyday Memory and Lifestyle: Data from a Large Scale Internet Study with 408,938 Participants. DOI:10.17605/OSF.IO/AK5PB

  4. Belletier, C., Doherty, J.M., Jaroslawska, A.J., Rhodes, S., Cowan, N., Naveh-Benjamin, M.,  Barrouillet, P., Camos, V., & Logie, R.H. (2023). Strategic adaptation to dual-task in verbal working memory: Potential routes for theory integration. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 49, 51–77.

    doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001106.

  5. Rivera-Lares, K., Logie, R.H., Baddeley, A.D., & Della Sala, S. (2022). Rate of forgetting is independent of initial degree of learning. Memory and Cognition 50, 1706–1718. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-021-01271-1.
  6. Logie, R.H., Belletier, C. & Doherty, J.D. (2021). Integrating theories of working memory. In R.H. Logie, V. Camos, & N. Cowan, (Eds.) Working Memory: State of the Science, pp 389-429. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  7. Rhodes, S., Jaroslawska, A.J., Doherty, J.M., Belletier, C., Naveh-Benjamin, M., Cowan, N., Camos, V., Barrouillet, P., & Logie, R.H. (2018). Storage and processing in working memory: Assessing dual task performance and task prioritization across the adult lifespan. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000539
  8.  Doherty, J.M., Belletier, C., Rhodes, S., Jaroslawska, A., Barrouillet, P., Camos, V., Cowan, N., Naveh-Benjamin, M. & Logie, R.H. (2018).  Dual-task costs in working memory: An adversarial collaboration. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000668
  9. Logie, R.H. (2019). Converging sources of evidence and theory integration in working memory: A commentary on Morey, Rhodes, and Cowan (2019). Cortex, 112, 162-171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2019.01.030
  10. Shimi, A., & Logie, R.H. (2019). Feature binding in short-term memory and long-term learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72, 1387-1400. https://doi-org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1177/1747021818807718
  11. Logie, R.H. (2018). Human Cognition: Common Principles and Individual Variation. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition,7, 471-486.
  12. Logie, R.H. (2016). Retiring the Central Executive.  Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69, 2093–2109. DOI 10.1080/17470218.2015.1136657
  13. Logie. R.H., Saito, S., Morita, A., Varma, S. & Norris, D. (2016). Recalling visual serial order for verbal sequences. Memory and Cognition, 44, 590-607. DOI 10.3758/s13421-015-0580-9

Ode to Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

Immortal Working Memory (2024)

The Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire

Qualifications

BSc PhD FBPsS, FRSE, FPsyS

H-index:89   >33,000 citations

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GpMioWMAAAAJ&hl=e

Responsibilities & affiliations

Emeritus Fellow of the British Psychological Society

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Emeritus Fellow of the Psychonomic Society

Honorary Lifetime Member of Experimental Psychology Society

Honorary Lifetime Member of European Society for Cogntive Psychology

Undergraduate teaching

As I have now retired, I am no longer teaching undergraduate courses.

Postgraduate teaching

As I have now retired, I am no longer teaching postgraduate courses.

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

No

Areas of interest for supervision

As I have now retired, I will not be available for starting supervision of new PhD students.

Current PhD students supervised

  • Mario Cecchini
  • Elva Peng
  • Zibin Zhu

Past PhD students supervised

Previous PhD students (year of PhD completion)

Alice Salway (1991), Valerie Wynn (1996), Eugenio Alberdi (1996), David Pearson (1997), Adrian Ellis (1999), Susan Rudkin (2000), Nicoletta Beschin (2001), Gianna Cocchini (2001), Stephen Darling (2001), Anna Law (2003), Abdo Soliman (2005), Marian van der Meulen (2008), Andy Fugard (2008), Mario Parra (2009), Snehlata Jaswal (2010), Shyuan Ya Jin (2010), Elaine Niven (2011), Joanna Brooks (2012), Ben Alderson-Day (2013), Takayuki Miura (2014), Mark Horne (2015), Stephen Rhodes (2016), Jason Doherty (2016), Catherine Jordan (2018), Ilaria Taglialatela Scafati (2019), Alicia Forsberg (2019), Andreea Stamate (2020), Karim Rivera Lares (2022), Riccardo Sacripante (2022).

Research summary

Research interests focus on theoretical and applied aspects of the cognition of human memory in the healthy brain across the lifespan.

Latest research activities and personal awards

2016-2020  £1.36 million (FEC) from Economic and Social Research Council. Working memory across the adult lifespan: An adversarial collaboration. Logie was PI. Co-Is N. Cowan &

 M. Naveh-Benjamin (USA), P. Barrouillet & V. Camos  (Switzerland). Award reference ES/N010728/1

2016-2019 £54,750 From British Academy. Newton Fellowship for Dr Weng-Tink Chooi, Universiti Sains Malaysia

Knowledge exchange

International Conference on Working Memory. Cambridge, 9th – 11th July 2014

Project activity

Latest research grants/project

Recent grants

International Conference on Working Memory 2014

9-11 July 2014, Cambridge, UK

Ode to Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

Previous projects

Current project grants

Economic and Social Research Council.Working memory across the adult lifespan: An adversarial collaboration. (With Cowan, Naveh-Benjamin, Camos & Barrouillet). Award number ES/N010728/1. 2016-2020.

Past project grants

European Commission FP7 Framework Large Scale Integrating Project. ForgetIT: Concise preservation by combining managed forgetting and contextualised remembering (with 10 other academic and commercial partners spread across 7 EU countries). 2013-2016.

Economic and Social Research Council. Encoding and interference effects on visual working memory binding in young and older adults. (with Brown and Allen). 2012

The Leverhulme Trust. Multitasking: An experimental study of the complexities of everyday cognition. (With Law). 2008-2010.

Engineering and Physical Sciences Council. BabyTalk: Generating Textual Summaries of Clinical Temporal Data. (with Hunter, Freer, McIntosh, Reiter, Sripada). Award numbers EP/D049520/1 and EP/D05057X/1. 2006-2010.

The Alzheimer Society. Dual task impairment in Alzheimer Disease: An investigation on specificity and development of a clinical tool. (with Della Sala and Starr). 2007-2010.

Chief Scientist Office, Scottish Executive Health Dept. Working memory as a mental workspace: Evidence from implicit processing and representational deficits in unilateral neglect (with Della Sala and Dennis). Award reference CZB/4/346. 2005-2008.

Dual-task impairment in alzheimer disease: an investigation on specificity and development of a clinical tool.

Working memory as a mental workspace: Evidence from implicit processing and representational deficits in unilateral neglect.