Dr Felicity Deamer
Research Fellow, English Aston University
- Birmingham
Dr Deamer's research explores the linguistic and communicative dynamics of police interviews.
Media
Social
Biography
More broadly, Felicity works with other members of AIFL to examine how transcriptions of police interview recordings are made and subsequently used in court as evidence, and how this process might be improved to increase the evidential value of those police interviews.
Prior to Felicity's post at Aston, she has held research fellowships on interdisciplinary mental health research projects. She has used a variety of methods, from conversation analysis to eye-tracking, to investigate a variety of phenomena, including patient/therapist interactions and metaphor comprehension in psychosis.
Areas of Expertise
Education
University College London
BA
Linguistics
2007
University College London
MRes
Speech, Language and Cognition
2009
University College London
PhD
Linguistics
2013
Links
Articles
Voice-Hearing and Personification: Characterizing Social Qualities of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Early Psychosis
Schizophrenia BulletinRecent therapeutic approaches to auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) exploit the person-like qualities of voices. Little is known, however, about how, why, and when AVH become personified. We aimed to investigate personification in individuals’ early voice-hearing experiences. We invited Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) service users aged 16–65 to participate in a semistructured interview on AVH phenomenology. Forty voice-hearers (M = 114.13 days in EIP) were recruited through 2 National Health Service trusts in northern England.
Factive and counterfactive interpretation of embedded clauses in aphasia and its relationship with lexical, syntactic and general cognitive capacities
Journal of NeurolinguisticsIn factive clausal embedding ([He knows [that it is warm outside]]), the embedded clause is presupposed to be true. In non-factive embedding ([He thinks [that it is warm outside]]) there is no presupposition, and in counterfactive embedding ([It only seems [that it is warm outside]]) the embedded clause is presupposed to be false. These constructions have been investigated as a window into the complexity of language and thought, and there are disputes as to the relative contributions of lexical, syntactic or non-verbal resources in their interpretation.
Language in schizophrenia and aphasia: the relationship with non-verbal cognition and thought disorder
Cognitive NeuropsychiatryTo determine the relationship between language abnormalities and broader cognitive impairment and thought disorder by examining language and cognition in schizophrenia and aphasia (a primary language disorder).
Non-literal understanding and psychosis: Metaphor comprehension in individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia
Schizophrenia Research: CognitionPrevious studies suggest that understanding of non-literal expressions, and in particular metaphors, can be impaired in people with schizophrenia; although it is not clear why. We explored metaphor comprehension capacity using a novel picture selection paradigm; we compared task performance between people with schizophrenia and healthy comparator subjects and we further examined the relationships between the ability to interpret figurative expressions non-literally and performance on a number of other cognitive tasks.
The ice in voices: Understanding negative content in auditory-verbal hallucinations
Clinical Psychology ReviewNegative voice-content is the best sole predictor of whether the hearer of an auditory-verbal hallucination will experience distress/impairment necessitating contact with mental health services. Yet, what causes negative voice-content and how interventions may reduce it remains poorly understood. This paper offers definitions of negative voice content and considers what may cause negative voice-content.
