Psychology

Profile

Background

Gary Lancaster came to the University of Portsmouth as an undergraduate in 2004 after a ten year career as an Electronics Engineer. He graduated with a First in Psychology in July 2007 and won a regional BPS award for his 3rd year dissertation. In October 2007 he was awarded a place on the departmental GATS Scheme in order to complete his MSc in Psychological Research Methods for which he gained a Distinction. Gary completed his PhD in December 2011 under the supervision of Professor Aldert Vrij, Dr Lorraine Hope and Dr Bridget Waller.

Research

My PhD research involved using secondary tasks to measure cognitive load during information gathering interviews, in order to explore potential verbal and non-verbal differences between lying and truth telling interviewees. I remain very interested in deception research but am now working in an applied psychology role outside of academia which requires me to maintain a much wider range of research interests.

Teaching

Between 2007 and 2012 I worked in the Psychology department as an associate lecturer, a tutor, demonstrator and coursework marker for 1st and 2nd year practicals units. In addition, I also taught computing and SPSS skills to 2nd year psychology undergraduates and conducted seminars in cognitive psychology with year 1 students. In 2011 I lectured and took seminars on social psychology for the BSc Psychology course at the University of Winchester.

Recent Publications

More recent publications

Presentations

Lancaster G. L. J., & Vrij A. – The effect of secondary-task-induced cognitive load on liars' and truth tellers' eye gaze frequency during an interview. Platform presentation at the 20th Annual Conference of the European Association of Psychology and Law, 15 – 18 June 2010, Gothenberg, Sweden.

Lancaster G. L. J., & Vrij A. – Effects of secondary-task induced cognitive load on liars & truth tellers during an information gathering interview. Poster presented at the 19th Annual Conference of the European Association of Psychology and Law, 2 – 5 September, Sorrento, Italy.

Invited Talks

Lancaster, G. L. J., Vrij, A., Hope, L., & Waller, B. – The effects of dual-task interviews on cognitive load and cues to deception. Invited talk for Defence Science & Technology Laboratories (Dstl) January 2012.

Lancaster, G.L.J - Detecting deception: Myths and realities – Invited talk for the National Police Improvements Agency (NPIA) December 2011.