Professor Craig Speelman received his PhD in Cognitive Psychology from UWA in 1992. After a postdoctoral research fellowship at UWA, he held academic posts at the University of New England and Griffith University. He joined Edith Cowan University in 1997. He was Head of the School of Psychology and Social Science (2002-2011) and is currently the Associate Dean Research in the School of Arts and Humanities.
Craig Speelman conducts research in the general area of Cognitive Psychology, but much of his research has focussed on the topic of skill acquisition and transfer, including the effects of transfer on the shape of learning functions, the relationship between skill acquisition and implicit memory, and the specificity of skill acquisition and transfer. Speelman has applied this expertise to developing a training program for the acquisition of skin cancer detection skills, and the development of basic arithmetic skills, where he produced the commercial app Numbeat. He has been awarded ARC Large Grants/Discovery Grants previously to investigate the effects of different types of skill acquisition on the nature of expertise, and an ARC Linkage project to investigate ways of improving the financial literacy skills of Western Australian Police recruits. He is currently interested in the relationship between skill automaticity and transfer of training, and the impact of computer interfaces on cognitive load.