Professor Ian Apperly FBA
What is social understanding and how can we study it? How does it develop in children? What are its cognitive and neural bases? And why do some people appear to have better social understanding than others?
- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year elected
- 2025
- Honours
- FBA
- Subjects
- Psychology
- Sections
- Psychology
Summary
Ian Apperly is an experimental psychologist. He studies social understanding, its cognitive and neural basis, how it develops, and why it varies between people. This has led to an interest in neurodiversity, and other sources of variability in how people understand one another.
He attended Ivybridge Community College in Devon, and studied Natural Sciences at St John’s College, Cambridge (1992-1995), before moving to Birmingham for a PhD in developmental psychology.
He is the founding director of the Centre for Developmental Science at the University of Birmingham.
He has been awarded the Margaret Donaldson Prize by the British Psychological Society, and the EPS Prize by the Experimental Psychology Society.