Between 2021 and 2024 I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy and Psychology working on a UKRI funded interdisciplinary project called 'Agency, Rationality and Epistemic Defeat'. This project - in collaboration with the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna - is exploring the origins of human rational thought by comparing how human infants, dogs, and pigs form and revise beliefs, specifically whether these non-linguistic populations have capacities for reflective belief revision.
I received my PhD in Developmental Psychology and MSc in Child Development from the University of Stirling and a BSc in Applied Psychology from Heriot-Watt University.
My PhD was supervised by Professor Christine Caldwell and focused on development of socio-cognitive mechanisms proposed to underlie distinctively human cumulative culture.
My research interests include social learning, cognitive development, cumulative cultural evolution, comparative cognition, and prosocial behaviour.
Article
Reflective belief revision before the age of reason
Blakey KH, Dow CL, Veit A, Recelj B, Virányi Z, Melis G & Rafetseder E (2026) Reflective belief revision before the age of reason. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 270, Art. No.: 106547. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2026.106547
Article
Adults show selective responses to unreliability based on the strength of counterevidence
Blakey KH, Melis G, Virányi Z & Rafetseder E (2025) Adults show selective responses to unreliability based on the strength of counterevidence. PLOS One, 20 (11), Art. No.: e0331480. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0331480
Article
Blakey KH, Rafetseder E, Melis G, Veit A, Amelung K, Freudensprung F, Kovacs K & Virányi Z (2025) Non-verbal rationality? 2-year-old children, dogs and pigs show unselective responses to unreliability, but to different degrees. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.70020
Article
Epistemic Rationality Begins Unreflectively
Melis G & Blakey K (2025) Epistemic Rationality Begins Unreflectively. Erkenntnis. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-025-00977-x
Article
Children consider others’ need and reputation in costly sharing decisions
Blakey KH (2025) Children consider others’ need and reputation in costly sharing decisions. Scientific Reports, 15, Art. No.: 7103. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-91648-y
Article
Blakey KH, Renner E, Atkinson M, Rafetseder E & Caldwell CA (2022) Children transition from simple associations to explicitly reasoned social learning strategies between age four and eight. Scientific Reports, 12 (1), Art. No.: 5045. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09092-1
Article
Blakey KH, Atkinson M, Rafetseder E, Renner E & Caldwell CA (2022) Taking account of others' goals in social information use: Developmental changes in 3- to 7-year-old children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 215, Art. No.: 105325. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105325
Article
Development of strategic social information seeking: Implications for cumulative culture
Blakey KH, Rafetseder E, Atkinson M, Renner E, Cowan-Forsythe F, Sati SJ & Caldwell CA (2021) Development of strategic social information seeking: Implications for cumulative culture. PLOS ONE, 16 (8), Art. No.: e0256605. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256605
Thesis
Developing Distinctively Human Cumulative Culture: Age-Related Changes in Social Information Use
Blakey KH (2021) Developing Distinctively Human Cumulative Culture: Age-Related Changes in Social Information Use. PhD Psychology. University of Stirling.
Article
Atkinson M, Blakey K & Caldwell C (2020) Inferring behavior from partial social information plays little or no role in the cultural transmission of adaptive traits. Cognitive Science, 44 (10), Art. No.: e12903. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12903
Article
Experimental assessment of capacities for cumulative culture: Review and evaluation of methods
Caldwell CA, Atkinson M, Blakey KH, Dunstone J, Kean D, Mackintosh G, Renner E & Wilks CEH (2020) Experimental assessment of capacities for cumulative culture: Review and evaluation of methods. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 11 (1), Art. No.: e1516. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1516
Article
Blakey K, Mason E, Cristea M, McGuigan N & Messer E (2019) Does kindness always pay? The influence of recipient affection and generosity on young children's allocation decisions in a resource distribution task. Current Psychology, 38 (4), pp. 939-949. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00260-7
Article
In the jungle of cultural complexity
Wilks CEH & Blakey KH (2018) In the jungle of cultural complexity. Evolutionary Anthropology, 27 (5), pp. 180-183. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21724
I have previously contributed to teaching on Psychology undergraduate modules in Developmental Psychology and Animal Behaviour and postgraduate modules in Psychological Research Methods.
I also supervised research projects and undergraduate and postgraduate research placements.
I was awarded Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in 2023.
