Dr Merce Prat-Sala

Senior Lecturer

Department of Psychology

Merce.Prat-Sala@winchester.ac.uk

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Biography

Dr Merce Prat Sala is Senior Lecturer in Psychology.

Qualifications:

PhD in Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh
MSc in Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh
BPS - Test User: Occupational, Ability and Personality
Higher Education Teaching Qualification: Higher Education Academy Fellowship (FHEA)

Publications

Kibble, S., Gray, D., Prat-Sala, M., et al. (2014). Recovery coaching in an acute older people rehabilitation ward. BMJ Quality Improvement Research, 3. doi:10.1136/bmjquality.u205646.w2316
Gray, D., Ross, K., Prat-Sala, M., Kibble, S., & Harden, B. (2015) Stepping Back and Listening: Staff Experiences of Using a Recovery Coaching Approach in an Acute Rehabilitation Ward for Older Adults. Qualitative Health Research, 1-10. DOI: 10.1177/1049732315604589
Prat-Sala, M. & Redford, P. (2012). Does self-efficacy matters? The relationship between self-efficacy in reading and in writing and undergraduate students’ performance in essay writing. Educational Psychology 32, 9-20.
Prat-Sala, M., & Redford, P. (2010). The interplay between Motivation, Self-Efficacy and Approaches to Studying, British Journal of Educational Psychology 80(2), 283-305.
Pothos, E., Hahn, U., & Prat-Sala, M. (2010). Contingent necessity vs logical necessity in categorization. Thinking and Reasoning 16(1), 45-65.
Hahn, U., Prat-Sala, M., Pothos, E. M., & Brumby, D. (2010). Exemplar similarity and rule application. Cognition, 114, 1-18.
Pothos, E., Hahn, U., & Prat-Sala, M. (2009). Similarity chains in the transformational paradigm. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 21(7), 1100-1120.
Prat-Sala, M., & Hahn, U. (2007). Catalan children’s sensitivity to the discourse constraints imposed by different kinds of questions. Language Learning, 57. 443-467.
Hahn, U., Prat-Sala, M., & Pothos, E. M. (2002). How Similarity Affects the Ease of Rule Application. Proceedings of Cognitive Science Society. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.
Coventry, K. R., & Prat-Sala, M. (2001). Object-specific function, geometry and the comprehension of in and on. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 13, 509-528.
Coventry, K. R., Prat-Sala, M., & Richards, L. (2001). The Interplay Between Geometry and Function in the Comprehension of Over, Under, Above and Below. Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 376-398.
Prat-Sala, M., & Branigan, H. P. (2000). Discourse Constraints on Syntactic Processing in Language Production: A Cross-linguistic Study in English and Spanish. Journal of Memory and Language, 42, 168-182.
Prat-Sala, M., Shillcock, R., & Sorace, A. (2000). Animacy Effects on the Production of Object-dislocated Descriptions by Catalan-speaking Children. Journal of Child Language, 27, 97-117.
Branigan, H. P., & Prat-Sala, M. (1999). A Cross-linguistic Perspective on Discourse Context and Syntactic Processing in Language Production. In: M. De Vincenzi and V. Lombardo (Eds), Cross-linguistic perspectives on language processing, pp 205-26. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Coventry, K. R., & Prat-Sala, M. (1998). Geometry, function and the comprehension of over, under, above and below. Proceedings of Cognitive Science Society. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.
Prat-Sala, M., & Shillcock, R. (1997). The Role of Animacy in Production: A Developmental Approach. In: A. Sorace, C. Heycock & R. Shillcock (Eds), Proceedings of the GALA ‘97 Conference on Language Acquisition. Edinburgh, Scotland.

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Research interests

Language Acquisition and Development: the primary interest is the study of the acquisition, comprehension and production of different syntactic structures by children of different languages. I am also interested in the acquisition of concepts.
Language Production: the cognitive processes of adult language production and the type of generator involved in language production.
Self-efficacy, motivation and approaches to studying: work here looks at different aspects of students’ individual differences that might impact on their study behaviour.

Supervision of research students

I welcome enquiries about research supervision; my areas of supervision are: the psychology of language, in particular first-language acquisition and the processing of language production by children and adults; child development, in particular the development of moral reasoning; individual differences in general and in student learning in particular.