Position Overview & Specifications
**Note that this role has a number of part-time opportunities as per the below**
- Post Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) (Grade 7) – 0.5 FTE – 01 October 2023 to 30 November 2025
- Research Assistant (Grade 6) – 0.8 FTE – 01 October 2023 to 31 May 2025
- Research Assistant (Grade 6) – 0.6 FTE – 01 October 2023 to 31 December 2025
The School of Psychology are seeking to hire a Research Associate or Research Assistant for a project on the topic of conversation skills in typically-developing and autistic primary-school-aged children. The post is funded by a Leverhulme Trust grant (see here for more details: https://research.kent.ac.uk/keep-conversations-going/).
You will work on a series of experimental studies involving conversational interaction between yourself and primary-school-aged children. The focus of these studies is on manipulating children’s ability to respond appropriately whilst avoiding saying too much (monologuing), alongside the ability to switch topics when necessary. These studies examine the role played by the child’s interests or hobbies, their cognitive flexibility and their core language processing efficiency.
You will need to be able to think on your feet to combine elements of spontaneous conversation with elements which must remain the same for all participants. Please note, you will need to be able to easily understand a variety of British regional accents as spoken by 7- to 11-year-old children via Zoom and so be expected to have native fluency in English. Candidates who are short-listed for interview will be asked to converse briefly with some carefully selected volunteer child participants.
As a Research Assistant/Associate you will:
- Be responsible for implementing the experiments;
- Recruit the child participants;
- Collect and manage/analyse data;
- Assist with disseminating the project’s findings;
To be successful in the role you will have/be:
- For PDRA-level applicants - A doctorate (submitted with a viva date) in Developmental Psychology, Psycholinguistics, Human Communication Sciences, Autism Studies or Education;
- For Research Assistant applicants – an undergraduate degree in Psychology, Linguistics, Speech and Language Therapy or Education;
- Excellent understanding of experimental design, child-friendly and autism-friendly methodologies;
- Demonstrable competency with quantitative data;
- Ability to be up-beat, engaging and flexible when holding conversations with children
Please see the links below to view the full job description, additional information and also to apply for this post. If you require further information regarding the application process, please contact the HR Team on hsshr@kent.ac.uk quoting ref number: HSS-177-23. You may also email the Principal Investigator, Dr Kirsten Abbot-Smith, on K.Abbot-Smith@kent.ac.uk with any informal queries.