Kelsey Perrykkad

Kelsey Perrykkad (previously Palghat) has an interdisciplinary background, working between cognitive science and philosophy. She is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the Cognition and Philosophy Lab.

Kelsey studies how people act in the world to learn about who they are, and in turn, how one’s self-representation influences behaviour and wellbeing. She investigates self-representation in various mental health conditions (e.g. autism), at key developmental points in the lifespan (e.g. pregnancy), and how features of self-representation correlate with real-world behaviour (e.g. charitable donation).

Kelsey's PhD was conferred in mid-2021, and conducted in the lab under the primary supervision of Jakob Hohwy along with secondary supervisor Sharna Jamadar. Titled Self in Autism: A Predictive Perspective, the project was about how putting together predictive processing theories of the self and autism spectrum conditions might lead us to better understand self-cognition in autism. She primarily used eye-tracking and behavioural measures in a judgement of agency task, along with other theoretical and experimental projects.

Before starting her PhD at Monash, Kelsey worked at the Queensland Brain Institute as a Senior Research Assistant and the EEG lab manager. There, she studied the sense of agency, the intersection between education and neuroscience in real classrooms (with the SLRC) and neural correlates of motor preparation in naturalistic movements. She simultaneously worked for the Autism CRC, as a Senior Research Officer under the Classroom Acoustics Project , which tested the efficacy of sound field systems in improving the classroom environment for autistic children. She has also worked as a research assistant at Occidental College, where she helped develop novel pedagogical methods and worked on a project about the ethical, social and legal implications of the human genome project.

Publications

Verdejo-Garcia, A. … Perrykkad, K. … Ekhtiari, H. (2022) Cognitive Training and remediation interventions for substance use disorders: A Delphi consensus study. Addiction. Preprint: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.07.28.22278144

Perrykkad, K., Sherwell, C., Kirby, J., Hohwy, J. (2022). Beliefs About Action Efficacy Mediate the Relationship Between Self-Concept Clarity and Self-Reported Compassionate Action. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research and Practice. Preprint: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7twj4

Perrykkad, K., Robinson, J. E., & Hohwy, J. (2022). Foraging for the Self: Environment selection for agency inference. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.

Perrykkad, K., & Hohwy, J. (2022). How selves differ within and across cognitive domains: Self-prioritisation, self-concept, and psychiatric traits. BMC Psychology.

Maron, D. N., Bowe, S. J., Spencer-Smith, M., Mellahn, O. J., Perrykkad, K., Bellgrove, M. A., Johnson, B. (2021) Oculomotor deficits in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): A systematic review and comprehensive meta-analysis. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews.

Wilson, W. J., Harper-Hill, K., Armstrong, R., Downing, C., Perrykkad, K., Rafter, M., Ashburner, J. (2021) A preliminary investigation of sound-field amplification as an inclusive classroom adjustment for children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of Communication Disorders.

Harper-Hill, K., Wilson, W., Armstrong, R., Perrykkad, K., Downing, C., & Ashburner, J. (2021). Sound amplification in school contexts: Implications for inclusive practice. In Supporting students on the autism spectrum in inclusive schools: A practical guide to implementing evidence-based approaches (Ch7, pp. 88-103). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. eBook ISBN: 9781003049036

Perrykkad, K., Lawson, R.P, Jamadar, S.D., Hohwy, J. (2020). The Effect of Uncertainty on Prediction Error in the Action-Perception Loop. bioRxiv: 2020.2006.2022.166108.

Perrykkad, K., & Hohwy, J. (2020). Fidgeting as Self-Evidencing: A predictive processing account of non-goal-directed action. New Ideas in Psychology, 56, 100750. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2019.100750

Carroll, A., Gillies, R. M., Cunnington, R., McCarthy, M., Sherwell, C., Palghat, K., Goh, F., Baffour, B., Bourgeois, A., Rafter, M., & Seary, T. (2019). Changes in science attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and physiological arousal after implementation of a multimodal, cooperative intervention in primary school science classes. Information and Learning Sciences, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print). doi:10.1108/ils-08-2018-0089

Perrykkad, K. (2019). Adaptive Behaviour and Predictive Processing Accounts of Autism. Brain and Behavioural Sciences, 42, e82: 1-73.

Perrykkad, K., & Hohwy, J. (2019). When big data aren’t the answer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201902050. [reply from authors] [unpublished comments on reply]

Perrykkad, K., & Hohwy, J. (2019). Modelling Me, Modelling You: the Autistic Self. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 1-31.

Van de Cruys, S., Perrykkad, K., & Hohwy, J. (2019). Explaining hyper-sensitivity and hypo-responsivity in autism with a common predictive coding-based mechanism. Cognitive neuroscience, 10(3), 164-166.

Wilson, W. J., Downing, C., Perrykkad, K., Armstrong, R., Arnott, W. L., Ashburner, J., & Harper-Hill, K. (2019). The ‘acoustic health’of primary school classrooms in Brisbane, Australia. Speech, Language and Hearing, 1-8.

Palghat, K., Horvath, J. C., & Lodge, J. M. (2017). The hard problem of ‘educational neuroscience’. Trends in neuroscience and education, 6, 204-210.

van der Kruk, Y., Wilson, W. J., Palghat, K., Downing, C., Harper-Hill, K., & Ashburner, J. (2017). Improved signal-to-noise ratio and classroom performance in children with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 4(3), 243-253.

Gillies, R. M., Carroll, A., Cunnington, R., Rafter, M., Palghat, K., Bednark, J., & Bourgeois, A. (2016). Multimodal representations during an inquiry problem-solving activity in a Year 6 science class: A case study investigating cooperation, physiological arousal and belief states. Australian Journal of Education, 60(2), 111-127.

Bednark, J. G., Poonian, S. K., Palghat, K., McFadyen, J., & Cunnington, R. (2015). Identity-specific predictions and implicit measures of agency.Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2(3), 253.

Morrissey, C., & Palghat, K. (2014). Engaging reading. Teaching Philosophy, 37(1), 37-55.

Social media

Google Scholar and  ORCID have the latest updates of Kelsey’s work.

Where possible, free copies of Kelsey’s work are available on her ResearchGate profile.

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Kelsey's personal website is also updated regularly

Public engagement

The role of synchrony in collaborative engagement – Article in Teacher Magazine

The danger of overselling science – Article in The Conversation