Dr Jonathan Waddington

Lecturer

Psychology

School of Health & Wellbeing

01752 636700

jwaddington@marjon.ac.uk

Role Summary

Dr Jonathan Waddington has achieved fellowship status of the Higher Education Authority and is actively involved in collaborative research projects within the fields of cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, with a special interest in improving outcomes for children and young people with visual or visuocognitive difficulties.

He is currently involved in projects to evaluate the effectiveness of habilitation programmes for young people with cerebral vision impairments in educational and at-home settings. He developed the perceptual training game, Eyelander (www.eyelander.co.uk), a freely available browser-based programme for young people with partial visual field loss. He has contributed to 18 peer-reviewed publications and has a h-index of 9. He has supervised one MRes student to completion. He is also an academic representative on Plymouth Marjon University's Research Ethics Panel.

Outside of academia, he works as an advisor at InFocus Charity, a specialist centre that supports young people with vision impairment and complex needs. At InFocus he works within the vision impairment advisory team to train staff working in education, allied healthcare, and paraprofessional roles to support young people with vision impairment at the centre.

Qualifications

PhD in Psychology (2012), Plymouth University, UK

PGCert in Learning & Teaching in Higher Education (2023), Plymouth Marjon University, UK

BSc in Physiology (2001), University College London, UK

Teaching

BSc Psychology

Understanding Research: Theory and Method
Neuroscience and Neuropsychology

MSc Psychology

The Brain and Cognition
Empirical Project

MRes (Psychology) supervision

Research

My primary research interests are in the field of translational neuropsychology, particularly with regards to improving outcomes for children and adults with vision impairment and sensory processing disorders caused by brain injury or neurodivergence. I also have a special interest in tele-rehabilitation and the gamification of therapy and support strategies.

Publications

Waddington, J. (2024). Retrospective investigation of improvements in functional vision for adolescent students with cerebral vision impairments in a specialist residential school and college setting. British Journal of Visual Impairment. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/02646196241255881

Swain, G., and Waddington, J. (2022). The effectiveness of self-advocacy videos to inform enablers about the support needs of students with vision impairment. British Journal of Visual Impairment, 40(2), 264-273. doi: 10.1177/0264619620972149.

Waddington, J., Pickering, J., and Hodgson, T. (2020). The Table-top Visual Search Ability Test for children and young people: Normative response time data from typically developing children. British Journal of Visual Impairment, 39(2), 117-130. doi: 10.1177/0264619620915258.

Clark, R., Blundell, J., Dunn, M., Erichsen, J., Giardini, M., Gottlob, I., Harris, C., Lee, H., Mcilreavy, L., Olson, A., Self, J., Vinuela-Navarro, V., Waddington, J., Woodhouse, M., Gilchrist, I., and Williams, C. (2019). The potential and value of objective eye tracking in the ophthalmology clinic. Eye, 33, 1200-1202. doi: 10.1038/s41433-019-0417-z.

Waddington, J., Linehan, C., Gerling, K., Williams, C., Robson, L., Ellis, R., and Hodgson, T. (2018). Evaluation of Eyelander, a Video Game Designed to Engage Children and Young People with Homonymous Visual Field Loss in Compensatory Training. Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, 112(6), 717-730. doi: 10.1177/0145482X1811200607.

Waddington, J., and Hodgson, T. (2017). Review of rehabilitation and habilitation strategies for children and young people with homonymous visual field loss caused by cerebral vision impairment. British Journal of Visual Impairment, 35(3), 197-210. doi: 10.1177/0264619617706100.

Waddington, J., and Harris, C. (2015). Human optokinetic nystagmus and spatial frequency. Journal of Vision, 15(13), 7. doi: 10.1167/15.13.7.

Waddington, J., Linehan, C., Gerling, K., Hicks, K., and Hodgson, T. (2015, April). Participatory Design of Therapeutic Video Games for Young People with Neurological Vision Impairment. In: CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Paper presented at CHI 2015: The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Seoul Republic of Korea (pp. 3533-3542). New York, NY: ACM Press. doi: 10.1145/2702123.2702261.

Harris, C., Waddington, J., Biscione, V., and Manzi, S. (2014). Manual Choice Reaction Times in the Rate-Domain. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8(102), 418. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00418.

Waddington, J., and Harris, C. (2013). The distribution of quick phase interval durations in human optokinetic nystagmus. Experimental Brain Research, 224(2), 179-187. doi: 10.1007/s00221-012-3297-z.

Waddington, J., and Harris, C. (2012). Human optokinetic nystagmus: A stochastic analysis. Journal of Vision, 12(12), 5. doi: 10.1167/12.12.5.

Harris, C., and Waddington, J. (2012, August). Biomimetics of Choice Behaviour for Autonomous Agents. In: Herrmann G. et al. (eds) Advances in Autonomous Robotics. Paper presented at TAROS 2012: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7429 (pp. 96-104). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-32527-4_9.

Harris, C., and Waddington, J. (2012). On the convergence of time interval moments: Caveat sciscitator. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 205(2), 345-356. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2012.01.017.

Expert Membership of professional bodies

Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy