Dr Poppy Watson

Dr Poppy Watson is working at University of Technology Sydney (poppy.watson@uts.edu.au), but maintains Adjunct Lecturer status at UNSW.

The research interests of Dr Poppy Watson lie at the intersection of motivation, attention and choice behaviour. The mechanisms that underlie reward-seeking behaviour are investigated in both healthy individuals and patient populations and this research aims to understand how and why maladaptive and compulsive reward seeking behaviour arises (i.e. as seen in addiction and obesity). She is also involved in intervention projects (to improve treatment outcomes for clinical patients and measuring efficacy of these interventions) and is interested more generally in health psychology and behaviour change.

Key Words: associative learning, reward, attention, control, addiction, habits, goal-directed, Pavlovian-instrumental transfer, EEG, eye tracking, fMRI, DTI

Originally from New Zealand, Poppy Watson completed her Masters (2011) and PhD (2016) at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.There, she investigated reward-seeking behaviours and how these could be triggered by cues in the environment. From 2017 - 2023 Poppy worked at UNSW - first as a postdoc with Mike Le Pelley and Steve Most and then as a Discovery Early Career research fellow (DECRA). Since October 2023 she has been working as a Lecturer at University of Technology Sydney, helping to develop the Psychology Undergraduate Programme.