Dr Andrew Olson BSc, MA, PhD

School of Psychology
Associate Professor
Director of PGT Programmes

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 3328
Email: a.l.o.olson@bham.ac.uk

Address: The School of Psychology
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Andrew Olson is a neuropsychologist who is interested in cognition and its various forms of breakdown and especially in the organization of language in the brain. He works with patient volunteers with aphasia, children, healthy adults and members of the deaf community.

Qualifications

BSc, Eckerd College; MA, Johns Hopkins; PhD Johns Hopkins

Biography

Andrew Olson did his undergraduate work in biology and an MA in poetry at the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University before completing his PhD with Alfonso Caramazza at Johns Hopkins. He did post-doctoral work with Glyn Humphreys at Birmingham before joining the staff as a Lecturer.

Teaching

Andrew currently teaches on the 2nd year Introduction to Psycholinguistics module and on the 1st year Language and Memory module and has contributed to various Masters courses that include topics related to language and the brain. In the past he has also taught statistics and programming.

Postgraduate supervision

Andrew is very happy to talk to potential PhD students who have interests in neuropsychology, speech and language therapy, linguistics, psycholinguistics and computational modeling. Students interested in joining the lab should email Andrew directly.

Research

Scopus Author ID: 35965895600

Andrew is interested in how language is organized in the mind and brain. He works with brain-damaged patients, children with developmental disorders (e.g. neurodegenerative disease) and other special populations, including participants from the deaf community. He uses a wide variety of methods, including standard neuropsychological assessment, computerized experiments and eye-tracking. He is interested in computational and statistical models of cognition and in using explicit models for testing theories of language organization.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Romani, C, Silverstein, P, Ramoo, D & Olson, A 2022, 'Effects of delay, length, and frequency on onset RTs and word durations: Articulatory planning uses flexible units but cannot be prepared', Cognitive Neuropsychology, vol. 39, no. 3-4, pp. 170-195. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2022.2070425

Romani, C, Olson, A, Aitkenhead, L, Baker, L, Patel, D, Van Spronsen, F, MacDonald, A, van Wegberg, A & Huijbregts, S 2022, 'Meta-analyses of cognitive functions in early-treated adults with phenylketonuria', Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, vol. 143, 104925. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104925

Ramoo, D, Olson, A & Romani, C 2021, 'Repeated attempts, phonetic errors, and syllabifications in a case study: Evidence of impaired transfer from phonology to articulatory planning', Cognitive Neuropsychology, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 485-517. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2021.1881349

Goranova, J, Olson, A & Krott, A 2021, 'What about lexical competition? Exploring the locus of lexical retrieval deficits in adults with developmental dyslexia', Neuropsychology, vol. 35, no. 8, pp. 822-846. https://doi.org/10.1037/neu0000767

Clark, R, Blundell, J, Dunn, M, Erichsen, J, Giardini, M, Gottlob, I, Harris, C, Lee, H, Mcilreavy, L, Olson, A, Self, J, Vinuela-Navarro, V, Waddington, J, Woodhouse, JM, Gilchrist, I & Williams, C 2019, 'The potential and value of objective eye tracking in the Opthalmology clinic', Eye, vol. 33, no. 8, pp. 1200–1202. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-019-0417-z

Blundell, J, Frisson, S, Chakrapani, A, Kearney, S, Vijay, S, MacDonald, A, Gissen, P, Hendriksz, C & Olson, A 2018, 'Markers of cognitive function in patients with metabolic disease: Morquio Syndrome and Tyrosinemia Type III', Cognitive Neuropsychology, vol. 35, no. 3-4, pp. 120-147. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2018.1443913

Blundell, J, Frisson, S, Chakrapani, A, Gissen, P, Hendriksz, C, Vijay, S & Olson, A 2018, 'Oculomotor abnormalities in children with Niemann-Pick Type C', Molecular Genetics and Metabolism, vol. 123, no. 2, pp. 159-168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymgme.2017.11.004

Romani, C, Thomas, L, Olson, A & Lander, L 2018, 'Playing a team game improves word production in post-stroke aphasia', Aphasiology, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 253-288. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2018.1548205

Westwood, SJ, Olson, A, Miall, R, Nappo, R & Romani, C 2017, 'Limits to tDCS effects in language: Failures to modulate word production in healthy participants with frontal or temporal tDCS', Cortex, vol. 86, pp. 64-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2016.10.016

Olson, A, Halloran, E & Romani, C 2015, 'Target/error overlap in jargonaphasia: The case for a one-source model, lexical and non-lexical summation, and the special status of correct responses', Cortex, vol. 73, pp. 158-179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2015.06.028

Breadmore, HL, Krott, A & Olson, AC 2014, 'Agreeing to disagree: Deaf and hearing children's awareness of subject-verb number agreement', The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 474-498. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2013.818702

Frisson, S, Olson, A & Wheeldon, L 2014, 'Competition between orthographically and phonologically similar words during sentence reading: evidence from eye movements', Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 73, pp. 148–173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2014.03.004

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Ramoo, D, Romani, C & Olson, A 2021, Lexeme and speech syllables in English and Hindi. A case for syllable structure. in G Sharma & J Lowe (eds), Trends in South Asian Linguistics. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM], vol. 367, De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin, pp. 415-462. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753066-016

Comment/debate

Westwood, SJ, Olson, A, Miall, C & Romani, C 2017, 'tDCS modulation of naming in healthy participants: Negative results and still no explanation – A response to a commentary by Gauvin et al. (2017)', Cortex. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2017.08.012

Review article

Thomas, L, Olson, A & Romani, C 2023, 'The impact of metabolic control on cognition, neurophysiology, and well-being in PKU: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the within-participant literature', Molecular Genetics and Metabolism, vol. 138, no. 1, 106969, pp. 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymgme.2022.106969

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