Dr
Ruth
Corps

School of Psychology

Early Career Research Fellow

r.corps@sheffield.ac.uk
ICOSS Building

Full contact details

Dr Ruth Corps
School of Psychology
ICOSS Building
219 Portobello

Sheffield

S1 4DP

Profile

I am an Early Career Research Fellow in Psychology, specialising in the cognitive mechanisms supporting conversation and the broader impacts of conversational breakdown and difficulty. My work has predominantly focused on student populations, but I am increasingly interested in populations that struggle with communication (such as those with hearing loss or ADHD) and how these difficulties develop across the lifespan. 

I completed both my MA (Hons) in Psychology and my MSc in Psychology of Language at the University of Dundee and my PhD in the Psychology of Language at the University of Edinburgh. My PhD investigated the predictive mechanisms that support rapid turn-taking during conversation, focusing on how predicting what another person is likely to say help us determine what we should say and when we should say it. After graduating, I stayed at Edinburgh for a further two years as a postdoctoral researcher, investigating how another person's perspective may help us predict what they are likely to say. I then spent four years at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, investigating the mechanisms supporting conversation in real-world interactions. 

Qualifications

PhD Psychology of Language (University of Edinburgh)
MSc Psychology of Language (University of Dundee)
MA (Hons) Psychology (University of Dundee)

Research interests

I am interested in the cognitive mechanisms supporting language use during conversation, factors that result in difficulty with these mechanisms, and the social impact of these breakdowns. I use a variety of methods (e.g., behavioural paradigms, eye-tracking, conversation analysis) and statistical techniques (e.g., Bayesian analyses) to investigate these issues. 

Publications

Journal articles

  • Amos RM, Corps RE & Pickering MJ (2026) . Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 41(7), 942-958.
  • Whitley A, Corps RE & Hadley LV (2026) . Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 41(4), 548-559.
  • Decuyper C, Corps RE & Meyer AS (2026) . Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 79(4), 803-818.
  • Corps RE, Shehzad M, McLaren AI, Fernandez LB & Hadley LV (2025) . Acta Psychologica, 260.
  • Corps RE & Meyer AS (2025) . Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 52(3), 489-504.
  • Corps RE & Meyer AS (2025) . Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 78(7), 1487-1499.
  • Corps RE & Pickering MJ (2024) . Scientific Reports, 14(1).
  • Corps RE & Pickering MJ (2024) . Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31(2), 839-848.
  • Corps RE, Yang F & Pickering MJ (2023) . Royal Society Open Science, 10(12).
  • Corps RE, Liao M & Pickering MJ (2023) . Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 26(1), 231-243.
  • Corps RE, Knudsen B & Meyer AS (2022) . Cognition, 223.
  • Corps RE, Brooke C & Pickering MJ (2022) . Journal of Memory and Language, 122.
Research group

Cognitive and neural processes across the lifespan

Grants

University of Sheffield Higher Education Innovation Fund (2026-27). Converging perspectives: Aligning cognitive mechanisms with the lived experiences of conversational difficulty in ADHD (PI; £10,750)

Experimental Psychology Society small grant (approx. £10,000)
ESRC PhD studentship (approx. £54,000)
 

Professional activities and memberships

Early Career Research Representative (School of Psychology)

Deputy chair of the School of Psychology's ethics committee