Paddy O'Connor

I graduated from QUB in 2014 with a BSc in Psychology (Hons) and was also awarded a PhD in 2019 from QUB. I previously worked at QUB School of Psychology as a Research Assistant, and as a Part-time Lecturer at Belfast Metropolitan College. I was appointed a Lecturer in Education at the School of Psychology in October 2020.

My research interests fall within Developmental and Cognitive Psychology. My PhD, and subsequent research, focuses on the importance of ordering skills to the development of maths learning in young children, with a focus on the development of diagnostic tools to detect maths difficulties in children at the beginning of primary school. My research also focuses on the effects of math anxiety on children’s maths learning, and how parental influences affect children’s attitudes towards mathematics. More recently, I have also been involved in research on adult and children's temporal cognition, and the development of visuospatial perspective-taking abilities.

I am a member of the Psychonomic Society and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.