Professor Ian Apperly BA PhD FBA

School of Psychology
Professor of cognition and development
Director of the Centre for Developmental Science

Contact details

Telephone: 0121 414 3339
Email: i.a.apperly@bham.ac.uk

Address: School of Psychology
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Ian Apperly is an experimental psychologist. He is interested in how we take other people’s perspectives, how these abilities develop, and why they vary. This has led to an interest in neurodiversity, and other sources of variability in how people understand one another. He is the author of over 100 journal articles, and the 2010 book, entitled “Mindreaders: The cognitive basis of theory of mind”.

Qualifications

Fellow of the British Academy
Ph.D., University of Birmingham
BA, University of Cambridge

Biography

Ian Apperly attended Ivybridge Community College in Devon, studied Natural Sciences at St John’s College, Cambridge, and came to Birmingham in 1995 to study for his Ph.D. with Liz Robinson.

Teaching

Ian Apperly's research interests inform his teaching, which includes a Masters level module on Neurodiversity, and part of a Final Year module on Different Minds: Child and Animal Intelligence.

Postgraduate supervision

Professor Apperly supervises doctoral researchers on all topics related to his research interests. Prospective doctoral researchers interested in joining the lab should email Ian in the first instance.

Research

Ian Apperly is an experimental psychologist. He studies social understanding, its cognitive and neural basis, how it develops, and why it varies between people. This has led to an interest in neurodiversity, and other sources of variability in how people understand one another.

Our ability to understand one another’s thoughts and feelings is a keystone ability, linking different levels of explanation from interpersonal (cognitive and neural) to intrapersonal (social and normative). Because of this it serves as a prominent case study for fundamental questions in cognitive science about innate versus acquired abilities, automatic versus controlled processing, and individual versus collective cognition. Through collaborations with philosophers, neuroscientists, economists, biologists, linguists, and computer scientists, Ian works on a wide range of empirical and conceptual questions about the nature, origins, and importance of social understanding.

Other activities

Ian Apperly has received early career prizes from the British Psychological Society and the Experimental Psychological Society. He is on the editorial board of the journals Cognition, and Neurodiversity. He has been treasurer of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and a member of the Psychology committee of the British Science Association.

Publications

Highlight publications

Devine, RT & Apperly, I 2021, 'Willing and able? Theory of mind, social motivation and social competence in middle childhood and early adolescence', Developmental Science, vol. 25, no. 1, e13137. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13137

Qureshi, AW, Monk, RL, Samson, D & Apperly, IA 2020, 'Does interference between self and other perspectives in theory of mind tasks reflect a common underlying process? Evidence from individual differences in theory of mind and inhibitory control', Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 178-190. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01656-z

Ellis, K, Moss, J, Stefanidou, C, Oliver, C & Apperly, I 2021, 'The development of early social cognitive skills in neurogenetic syndromes associated with autism: Cornelia de Lange, fragile X and Rubinstein-Taybi syndromes', Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases, vol. 16, no. 1, 488. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13023-021-02117-4

Apperly, I & Butterfill, SA 2009, 'Do humans have two systems to track beliefs and belief-like states?', Psychological Review, vol. 116, no. 4, pp. 953-70. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016923

Apperly, I 2010, Mindreaders:the cognitive basis of "theory of mind". Taylor & Francis.

Recent publications

Article

Wang, Y, Apperly, IA & Krott, A 2025, 'Executive functions, not bilingualism or cultural differences, predict visuospatial perspective-taking in young adults', Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S1366728925100825

Agostini, V, Apperly, I & Krott, A 2025, 'Greater sensitivity to communication partners’ perspectives in children learning a second language at school', Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728925000069

Baber, C, Kandola, P, Apperly, I & McCormick, E 2025, 'Human-centred explanations for artificial intelligence systems', Ergonomics, vol. 68, no. 3, pp. 391-405. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2024.2334427

van der Kleij, SW, Devine, RT, Shapiro, LR, Ricketts, J & Apperly, I 2025, 'Longitudinal Development of Theory of Mind in Adolescence and Its Associations with Fiction Reading Experience', Developmental Psychology, vol. 61, no. 6, pp. 1126-1135. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001965

Perez-Zapata, D, McKenzie-Smart, X, Charest, I & Apperly, I 2025, 'Meeting and missing minds: children and adults use alignment of intuitions to solve pure coordination games', Journal of Cognitive Psychology, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 277-292. https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2025.2452232

Perez Zapata, D, Isoni, A, Zawidzki, T & Apperly, I 2025, 'Three International Studies on Pure Coordination Games: Adaptable Solutions When Intuitions are Presumed to Vary', Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Apperly, IA, Lee, R, van der Kleij, SW & Devine, RT 2024, 'A transdiagnostic approach to neurodiversity in a representative population sample: The N+ 4 model', JCPP Advances, vol. 4, no. 2, e12219. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcv2.12219

Agostini, V, Apperly, I & Krott, A 2024, 'Bilingual education enhances creative fluency and flexibility over the first year of primary school', Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728924000579

Quesque, F, Apperly, I, Baillargeon, R, Baron-Cohen, S, Becchio, C, Bekkering, H, Bernstein, D, Bertoux, M, Bird, G, Bukowski, H, Burgmer, P, Carruthers, P, Catmur, C, Dziobek, I, Epley, N, Erle, TM, Frith, C, Frith, U, Galang, CM, Gallese, V, Grynberg, D, Happé, F, Hirai, M, Hodges, SD, Kanske, P, Kret, M, Lamm, C, Nandrino, JL, Obhi, S, Olderbak, S, Perner, J, Rossetti, Y, Schneider, D, Schurz, M, Schuwerk, T, Sebanz, N, Shamay-Tsoory, S, Silani, G, Spaulding, S, Todd, AR, Westra, E, Zahavi, D & Brass, M 2024, 'Defining key concepts for mental state attribution', Communications Psychology, vol. 2, no. 1, 29. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00077-6

Wang, J, Zhao, L, Alegado, J, Webb, J, Wright, J & Apperly, I 2024, 'Express: Remembering visual and linguistic common ground in shared history', The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218241256651

Yeung, K, Apperly, I & Devine, RT 2024, 'Measures of individual differences in adult theory of mind: A systematic review', Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, vol. 157, 105481. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105481

Pomareda, C, Devine, RT & Apperly, IA 2024, 'Mindreading quality versus quantity: A theoretically and empirically motivated two-factor structure for individual differences in adults’ mindreading', PLOS One, vol. 19, no. 6, e0305270. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0305270

Comment/debate

Apperly, IA 2025, 'What makes social abilities sophisticated? Not recursive mentalising', Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 48, e164. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25100526

Samuel, S, Erle, TM, Kirsch, LP, Surtees, A, Apperly, I, Bukowski, H, Auvray, M, Catmur, C, Kessler, K & Quesque, F 2024, 'Three key questions to move towards a theoretical framework of visuospatial perspective taking', Cognition, vol. 247, 105787. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105787

Conference contribution

Wang, Y, Dsouza, R, Lee, R, Apperly, I, Devine, RT, van der Kleij, S & Lee, M 2025, Automatic Scoring of an Open-Response Measure of Advanced Mind-Reading Using Large Language Models. in Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology (CLPsych 2025)). Association for Computational Linguistics, ACL, pp. 79–89, The Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, 3/05/25. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.clpsych-1.7

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