Dr Jonathan Waddington

Academic Director of RKE (Health)

Lecturer, Psychology

Research & Knowledge Exchange

01752 636700

jwaddington@marjon.ac.uk

Role Summary

Dr Jonathan Waddington is a cognitive neuroscientist with research expertise in neuropsychology and a particular interest in improving outcomes for children and young people with visual or visuocognitive difficulties. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and primarily teaches modules in neuropsychology and quantitative research methods across the undergraduate and postgraduate psychology programmes.

He is currently involved in collaborative research projects to evaluate the effectiveness of habilitation programmes for young people with cerebral vision impairments in educational and at-home settings. He developed the perceptual training game, Eyelander (www.eyelander.co.uk), a freely available browser-based programme for young people with partial visual field loss.

He has contributed to 18 peer-reviewed publications and holds an h-index of 9. He has supervised two MRes students to completion. Within the University, he serves as Academic Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange for the Health portfolio, Postgraduate Research Co-ordinator for the Health and Wellbeing pathway, and Pathway Lead for Health, Wellbeing and Society on the South West Doctoral Training Partnership PhD programme. He is also an academic representative on the University’s Research Ethics Panel

Outside academia, he worked for over a decade as an advisor at InFocus Charity, a specialist centre supporting young people with vision impairment and complex needs. In this role, he trained education, healthcare, and paraprofessional staff to better support young people with visual impairments at the centre.

Qualifications

PhD in Psychology (2012), Plymouth University, UK

PGCert in Learning & Teaching in Higher Education (2023), Plymouth Marjon University, UK

BSc in Physiology (2001), University College London, UK

Teaching

BSc Psychology

Understanding Research: Theory and Method
Research Practice in Psychology 1
Neuroscience and Neuropsychology

MSc Psychology

The Brain and Cognition
Empirical Project

MRes (Psychology) supervision

Research

My primary research interests are in the field of translational neuropsychology, particularly with regards to improving outcomes for children and adults with vision impairment and sensory processing disorders caused by brain injury or neurodivergence. I also have a special interest in tele-rehabilitation and the gamification of therapy and support strategies.

Publications

Föcker, J., Atkins, P., Waddington, J., Hicks, K., Hawes, E., Baker, M., Williams, C., Hodgson, T., Jowel, D., Irvine, A., Patterson, J., Green, C., & Dickinson, P. (2025). SENSE-braille: Children’s multisensory experiences with auditory-haptic gamified activities. British Journal of Visual Impairment. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/02646196251369664

Waddington, J. (2024). Retrospective investigation of improvements in functional vision for adolescent students with cerebral vision impairments in a specialist residential school and college setting. British Journal of Visual Impairment. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/02646196241255881

Swain, G., & Waddington, J. (2022). The effectiveness of self-advocacy videos to inform enablers about the support needs of students with vision impairment. British Journal of Visual Impairment, 40(2), 264-273. doi: 10.1177/0264619620972149

Waddington, J., Pickering, J., & Hodgson, T. (2020). The Table-top Visual Search Ability Test for children and young people: Normative response time data from typically developing children. British Journal of Visual Impairment, 39(2), 117-130. doi: 10.1177/0264619620915258

Clark, R., Blundell, J., Dunn, M., Erichsen, J., Giardini, M., Gottlob, I., Harris, C., Lee, H., Mcilreavy, L., Olson, A., Self, J., Vinuela-Navarro, V., Waddington, J., Woodhouse, M., Gilchrist, I., & Williams, C. (2019). The potential and value of objective eye tracking in the ophthalmology clinic. Eye, 33, 1200-1202. doi: 10.1038/s41433-019-0417-z

Waddington, J., Linehan, C., Gerling, K., Williams, C., Robson, L., Ellis, R., & Hodgson, T. (2018). Evaluation of Eyelander, a Video Game Designed to Engage Children and Young People with Homonymous Visual Field Loss in Compensatory Training. Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, 112(6), 717-730. doi: 10.1177/0145482X1811200607

Waddington, J., & Hodgson, T. (2017). Review of rehabilitation and habilitation strategies for children and young people with homonymous visual field loss caused by cerebral vision impairment. British Journal of Visual Impairment, 35(3), 197-210. doi: 10.1177/0264619617706100

Waddington, J., & Harris, C. (2015). Human optokinetic nystagmus and spatial frequency. Journal of Vision, 15(13), 7. doi: 10.1167/15.13.7

Waddington, J., Linehan, C., Gerling, K., Hicks, K., & Hodgson, T. (2015, April). Participatory Design of Therapeutic Video Games for Young People with Neurological Vision Impairment. In: CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Paper presented at CHI 2015: The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Seoul Republic of Korea (pp. 3533-3542). New York, NY: ACM Press. doi: 10.1145/2702123.2702261

Gerling, K., Linehan, C., Waddington, J., Kalyn, M., & Evans, A. (2015). Involving children and young adults with complex needs in game design. In CHI 2015 Workshop on Ethical Encounters in HCI: Research in Sensitive Settings.

Harris, C., Waddington, J., Biscione, V., & Manzi, S. (2014). Manual Choice Reaction Times in the Rate-Domain. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8(102), 418. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00418

Linehan, C., Waddington, J., Hodgson, T. L., Hicks, K., & Banks, R. (2014). Designing games for the rehabilitation of functional vision for children with cerebral visual impairment. In Proceedings of the CHI 2014 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1207-1212). ACM. doi: 10.1145/2559206.2581219

Waddington, J., & Harris, C. (2013). The distribution of quick phase interval durations in human optokinetic nystagmus. Experimental Brain Research, 224(2), 179-187. doi: 10.1007/s00221-012-3297-z

Harris, C., & Waddington, J. (2013). Optimal control theory of normal and pathological slow eye movements. Journal of Control Engineering and Technology, 3(4), 181–188.

Waddington, J., & Harris, C. (2012). Human optokinetic nystagmus: A stochastic analysis. Journal of Vision, 12(12), 5. doi: 10.1167/12.12.5

Harris, C., Waddington, J., & Erichsen, J. (2012). Infantile nystagmus: An adaptationist approach. In C. M. Harris, I. Gottlob, & J. Sanders (Eds.), The challenge of nystagmus (pp. 27-48). Nystagmus Network.

Harris, C., & Waddington, J. (2012, August). Biomimetics of Choice Behaviour for Autonomous Agents. In: Herrmann G. et al. (eds) Advances in Autonomous Robotics. Paper presented at TAROS 2012: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7429 (pp. 96-104). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-32527-4_9

Harris, C., & Waddington, J. (2012). On the convergence of time interval moments: Caveat sciscitator. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 205(2), 345-356. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2012.01.017

Expert Membership of professional bodies

Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy