Staff Profile

I describe myself as a developmental cognitive psychologist. My research encompasses the study of the contribution of long-term memory to the development of working memory capacity, and the development of memory circuits that support navigational and spatial memory. 

I joined the School of Psychology at Newcastle University on June 1st, 2022 as a Lecturer in Psychology. Prior to this, I completed my PhD at Lancaster University investigating the accessibility of memory items in children's working memory. Following this, I went on to work at Loughborough University on the Skills Underlying Maths (SUM) Project, and the development of spatial cognition at Durham University.  Finally, I completed a postdoctoral position at the University of Texas at Austin, where I studied the neurodevelopment of spatial cognition. 

My research comprises developmental psychology, cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience to study the development of learning and memory systems.

Children are proficient at immediately recalling a small number of items, but after a short delay the ability to retrieve the same information significantly declines. My research argues that children's reduced retrieval of longer-term memories is not necessarily because they have been forgotten, but is constrained by accessibility.

My research also used virtual reality paradigms and developmental neuroimaging techniques to examine a neurodevelopmental account of spatial cognition. The main focus of this work is to examine the neural mechanisms supporting the development of spatial coding in the developing human brain. Here I show that the structural and functional development of the medial temporal lobe and parietal cortex play a key role in age-related differences in spatial memory precision. 

I am currently the leader for the research methods components of PSY1010 (Research Methods and Skills I).

I am also an undergraduate and MRes supervisor for two experimental projects:

- The cognitive architecture of creativity

- Re-tracing your footsteps: the mnemonic time travel effect

• Negen J, Roome HE, Keenaghan S, Nardini M. Effects of two-dimensional versus three-dimensional landmark geometry and layout on young children's recall of locations from new viewpoints. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 2018, 170, 1-29.
• Schlichting ML, Guarino KF, Roome HE, Preston AR. Developmental differences in memory reactivation relate to encoding and inference in the human brain. Nature Human Behavior 2022, 6, 415-428.
• Coughlin CA, Ben-Asher E, Roome HE, Varga NL, Moreau MM, Schneider LL, Preston AR. Interpersonal family dynamics relate to hippocampal CA subfield structure. Frontiers in Neuroscience 2022, 16, 872101.
• Pudhiyidath A, Roome HE, Coughlin C, Nguyen KV, Preston AR. Developmental differences in temporal schema acquisition impact reasoning decisions. Cognitive Neuropsychology 2020, 37(1-2), 25-45.
• Roome HE, Towse JN, Crespo-Llado MM. Contextual support for children's recall within working memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 2019, 72(6), 1364-1378.
• Negen J, Chere B, Bird L-A, Taylor E, Roome HE, Keenaghan S, Thaler L, Nardini M. Sensory cue combination in children under 10 years of age. Cognition 2019, 193, 104014.
• Negen J, Heywood-Everett E, Roome HE, Nardini M. Development of allocentric spatial recall from new viewpoints in virtual reality. Developmental Science 2018, 21, e12496.
• Cragg L, Keeble S, Richardson S, Roome HE, Gilmore C. Direct and indirect influences of executive functions on mathematics achievement. Cognition 2017, 162, 12-26.
• Roome HE, Towse JN, Jarrold C. How do selective attentional processes contribute to maintenance and recall in children's working memory capacity?. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2014, 8, 1011.