About
Dinkar is a Reader in Psychology and Director of Education.
Research interests
Dinkar's main areas of current research are:
- EMOTION. Using the Stroop task and Posner's cueing paradigm I have looked at various factors that moderate the pattern of disruption from emotional stimuli. The major issue here is the role of emotional interference in cognitive control. Our hypothesis is that emotional interference is the result of systems that disengage attention from the task for a brief period of time. This has been implemented in a recent model (see Wyble, Sharma, & Bowman, 2008).
- ADDICTION: I am interested in the processing of addiction (in particular, alcohol and smoking) related stimuli. This research aims to develop objective measures, test cognitive models, and investigate techniques that can be used to reduce the impact of these stimuli.
- ATTENTION: Testing cognitive models of selective attention (eg connectionists, translation models) by varying task set (eg mindfulness meditation), properties of the stimulus as well as modality of the response.
Dinkar would welcome applications from potential doctoral students in these areas. Anyone interested in practicing meditation please see www.meditationkent.org
Supervision
Current research students
Past research students
- Dr Zaffie Cox (2020) What are the cognitive processes involved in mindfulness meditation?
- Dr Fatma Ateş (2018) Undertstanding spontaneous recognition: The role of working memory, emotions and mood
- Dr Tom Kupfer (2017) Disease avoidance and other functions of disgust (2nd supervisor)
- Dr Sarah Hotham (2013) Attention and eating behaviour: The role of cognitive control
- Dr Sharon Money (2010) Intentional and incidental Associative-Learning and the Emotional Stroop test
- Dr James Cane (2009) Smoking attentional bias: The role of automaticity, affect and cognitive control
- Dr Robert Booth (2009) Attentional Control Theory & Stroop interference: Selective attention deteriorates under stress
- Dr Ana Fernandez (2007) An investigation into how emotion orients attention
- Dr Jason Tipples (1999) Deciding emotional meaning: A preattentive process?
Professional
Grants and Awards
| 2012-2014 | Hopthrow T, Abrams D., & Sharma D.
DSTL
DSTL Network | £77,763 |
| 2010 | Sharma D. & Leader T.
British Academy
Charting the rise in anxious mood since 1969: a meta-analysis of trait anxiety across time and nations.
| £7,500 |
| 2010 | Sharma D.
University of Kent Faculty of Social Sciences
The role of emotion in new word learning. | £990 |
| 2006 | Hamilton-West K. & Sharma D.
British Academy
Physiological Responses to Positive Emotions: Testing the undoing effect. | £1,541 |
| 2004-06 | Sharma D. & Brown R.
Economic and Social Research Council
The social regulation of cognitive function | £42,873 |
| 2003-06 | Sharma D.
External collaborator on a French Ministry of Research grant to Huguet P. "Comportement et cognition : Études expérimentales de l'influence du contexte sur le traitement de l'information chez l'homme." ("Behaviour and cognition: Experimental studies of the influence of contextual factors on information processing in humans").
The social regulation of cognitive functioning | £25,000 |
| 1996-97 | D Sharma
University of Kent Small grant
Developing an objective measure of sensitivity to alcohol related stimuli. | £1,876 |
Professional memberships
