Dr Dinkar Sharma

Reader in Psychology,
Director of Education
Email
d.sharma@kent.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 (0)1227 823084
Dr Dinkar Sharma

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
2012-2014Hopthrow T, Abrams D., & Sharma D.
DSTL
DSTL Network		£77,763
2010Sharma 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
2010Sharma D.
University of Kent Faculty of Social Sciences 
The role of emotion in new word learning.		£990
2006Hamilton-West K. & Sharma D.
British Academy
Physiological Responses to Positive Emotions: Testing the undoing effect.		£1,541
2004-06Sharma D. & Brown R.
Economic and Social Research Council
The social regulation of cognitive function		£42,873
2003-06Sharma 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
1996-97D Sharma
University of Kent Small grant
Developing an objective measure of sensitivity to alcohol related stimuli.		£1,876

Professional memberships
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