Role
Professor Duncan Guest is Associate Dean of NTU Psychology, one of the largest psychology departments in the UK and one which has developed a reputation for the high standard of its teaching and learning as well as excellence in research and ensuring that our work has a positive impact on society.
Duncan joined NTU in 2011 as a Lecturer and subsequently was promoted to Senior Lecturer, Principal Lecturer, Associate Professor, Lead Research Co-ordinator for the School of Social Science, Deputy Head of Psychology and Head of Academy. He became Associate Dean for Psychology in 2024.
During his time at NTU Duncan has held a number of significant roles managing teaching and research. In terms of teaching, he was course leader for the BSc Psychology course (one of the largest courses at NTU) for several years. Subsequently he was the Undergraduate Course Delivery Lead, with management responsibility for overseeing the delivery and development of the suite of undergraduate courses offered in Psychology. As Deputy Head he was responsible for the continued quality, innovation and strategic development of the teaching and learning experience provided by the staff and experienced by students and oversaw the departmental response towards Covid-19. Duncan was Head of the NTU Psychology Academy for 3 years, which comprised around 130 staff and was responsible for the delivery of most of the courses in NTU Psychology.
Duncan's research spans a variety of topics, mostly in cognition and its applications. Within the School of Social Science he was the Lead for Research Centres and Research Groups from 2019-2023, overseeing the expansion of Research Groups across the School and the emergence of a set of six Research Centres and a Social Science Methods Hub that are driving forward research across the school. In the department he is an active member of a number of research groups, and previously led the Cognitive Research Group for several years. Externally, he has been an active member for the BPS Cognitive Section Committee, co-organising several conferences, initiating The Cognitive Psychology Bulletin and being Chair from 2017-2021. He is currently Deputy Chair of the BPS Research Board. He is also on the committee of the AHPD.
Career overview
Duncan completed his PhD at the University of Warwick in 2007 and held subsequent postdoctoral research positions in Psychology departments (University of Warwick and Oxford Brookes University) and Marketing departments (Universita Bocconi, Italy and Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland). Duncan joined NTU in 2011 and held a variety of management roles before becoming Associate Dean for Psychology.
Duncan’s research focuses mainly on (visual) cognition and its applications. He has published in a range of international journals, and his work has been covered a number of times in national and international media.
Recently he was the principal Investigator on a 2-year project funded by the Road Safety Trust on Hazard Perception in Mobility Scooter Users at Road Crossings – producing an evidenced based free training tool for mobility scooter users – See and Scoot. He has also been involved in disaster management research, supporting the C19 Foresight Group and was CI on an ESRC funded evaluation of the National Emergencies Trust coronavirus appeal. In 2024 he hosted a meeting of the Experimental Psychology Society at NTU.
Research areas
As a cognitive psychologist Duncan is interested in a broad range of cognitive phenomenon (e.g. visual perception, categorisation, attention, memory). His research spans a number of fields including;
Attention and capacity limitations in cognition
Representative Publications
Guest, D., Kent , C., & Adelman, J, S (2018). The relative importance of perceptual and memory sampling processes in determining the time course of absolute identification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44 (4),. 615-630.
Guest, D., Adelman, J. S., & Kent, C (2016). Relative judgement is relatively difficult: Evidence against the role of relative judgement in absolute identification. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 23 (3), 922-931.
Kent C., Guest, D., Adelman, J, A., & Lamberts, K (2014) Stochastic accumulation of feature information in perception and memory. Frontiers in Cognitive Science, 5, 412.
Visual information processing
Representative Publications
Howard, C, J., Pole, R., Montgomery, P., Woodwars, A., Guest, D., Standon, B., Kent, C., & Crowe, E., M (2020) Visual spatial attention and spatial working memory do not draw on shared capacity-limited core processes. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73, 799-818
Pilling, M., Guest, D., & Andrews, M (2019) Perceptual Errors Support the Notion of Masking by Object Substitution. Perception 48(2) 138–161.
Guest, D., Howard, C. J., Brown, L. A., & Gleeson, H (2015). Aging and the rate of visual information processing. Journal of Vision, 15(14):10, 1–25, doi:10.1167/15.14.10.
Applied Visual Cognition
Representative Publications
Laxton, V., Howard, C. J., Guest, D., & Crundall, D. (2023). Intense classification training to increase the detection of drowning swimmers. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 1– 11.
Mackenzie, A., Vernon, M., Cox, P., Crundall, D., Daly, R., Guest, D., Muhl-Richardson, A., & Howard, C (2021) The Multiple Object Avoidance (MOA) task measures attention for action: Evidence from driving and sport. Behaviour Research Methods (forthcoming)
Laxton, V., Guest, D., Howard, C.J. & Crundall, D. (2021). Search for a distressed swimmer in a dynamic, real-world environment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. 27(2), 352–368.
Mobility Scooter Safety & Accessibility
Representative Publications
Guest, D, Gous, G., Butcher, A., Mackenzie, A., Guest, G., Young, A., & Crundall, D (2023) Developing A Taxonomy of Hazards and Hazard Mitigation Strategies for Motorised Mobility Scooter Users. Accident Analysis & Prevention. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2023.107423
Guest, D., Chapman, N., Guest, G., Lumber, R., Wardle, L., & Winfield, K. (2023). Nature Connectivity and Accessibility. Report for the National Trust. https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/48410/1/1736122_Guest.pdf
Cognition & Consumer Behaviour
Representative Publications
Guest, D., Gibbert, M., Estes, Z., Mazursky, D., & Lam, M (2016). Modulation of taxonomic (versus thematic) similarity judgments and product choices by inducing local and global processing. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 28, 1013–1025.
Guest D., Estes Z., Gibbert M., & Mazursky D (2016). Brand Suicide? Memory and Liking of Negative Brand Names. PLoS ONE, 11(3): e0151628. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0151628
Holmqvist, J., Guest, D., & Gronroos, C, (2015). The role of psychological distance in value creation. Management Decision. 53(7), 1430-1451.
Emergency Services / Disaster Management
Reports
Andrews, S., Pickford, R., Hill, R. Alborough, L., Guest, D., and Uppal, S., (2022). National Emergencies Trust Coronavirus Appeal Evaluation. Summary report. Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University. https://www.ntu.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0036/1819944/NTU-National-Emergencies-Trust-Evaluation-Summary-Report.pdf
Hill, R., Guest, D., Hopkinson, A., Towler, A., Pickford, R., Crego, J., Sanderson, L. (2020). COVID-19 pandemic: national interim operational review. C-19 National Foresight Group
Hill, R., Guest, D., Price, W., Pickford, R., Towler, A., Paddock, C., Graham, E., et al (2020) Multi-Agency Information Cells. Learning from the Covid-19 Pandemic and other Major Incidents. C-19 National Foresight Group
External activity
Duncan is Deputy Chair of the BPS Research Board. He reviews articles for numerous journals and funding bodies and has ongoing collaborative research projects in a number of national and international institutions (see sponsors and collaborators tab).
Sponsors and collaborators
Duncan has been involved in previous grants from the ESRC, Road Safety Trust, DSTL and local government.
Press expertise
- Attention and memory
- Visual processing of older people
- Cognition and consumer behaviour
- Mobility Scooters