PhD
Instructor, Psychology
School of Social Sciences
Psychology
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
604.986.1911 ext. 3469
Fir Building, room FR451
markmcphedran@capilanou.ca
Education
B.A. (Honours) Psychology, University of Windsor, 2011
MSc. Cognitive & Perceptual Psychology, University of Western Ontario, 2014
PhD Cognitive & Perceptual Psychology, University of Western Ontario, 2018
"No, I am not trying to analyze you or read your mind!"
Bio
Mark McPhedran (PhD, University of Western Ontario, 2018) is a cognitive psychologist whose main scholarly interests are in psycholinguistics, primarily focusing on processes related to reading and reading disorders, semantic memory, and second language acquisition.
McPhedran has received degrees from his hometown University of Windsor, and the University of Western Ontario. Upon finishing his doctorate, McPhedran started his career as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Grenfell Campus, before coming to British Columbia and joining the Department of Psychology at Capilano University in September, 2023.
Beyond teaching introductory classes at Capilano, as a cognitive psychologist, many of the courses that I specialize in teaching are cognition-focused, dealing with topics related to memory, attention, language, thinking/reasoning, and sensation and perception. As someone who believes that having a strong background in research methods and statistics is essential for preparing students for their careers, I also enjoy working with students in statistics and research methods classes to try to make the topics relevant and interesting to them.
My research primarily focuses on processes related to word recognition. When encountering print, in other words, the processes required to activate representations in memory for pronunciation and meaning, and the nature of how word meanings are stored within semantic memory. I have studied these questions in the context of second language acquisition, and in the context of how reading disorders (e.g., dyslexia) develop.
Jouravlev, O., McPhedran, M., Hodgins, V., & Jared, D. (2023). Cross-language semantic parafoveal preview benefits in bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 49(10), 1683-1697.
McPhedran, M. J., & Lupker, S. J. (2021). L2-L1 noncognate masked translation priming as a task-specific phenomenon. Bilingualism: Langauge and Cognition, 24(3), 507-523.