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Email deirdre.brown@otago.ac.nzDeirdre Brown
Tel +64 3 556 6416

I completed my undergraduate and postgraduate studies in psychology and clinical psychology at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago, and then spent time as a Foundation for Research, Science and Technology postdoctoral fellow at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human in the USA, working with Professor Michael Lamb and in the Department of Psychology at the University of Lanacster, UK, working with Professor Charlie Lewis. I returned to Aotearoa to work as a clinical psychologist in Paediatric Outpatients at the Southern District Health Board,  and then joined Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University of Wellington. Most recently I was an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Medicine in the Dunedin School of Medicine.

Memberships

  • New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists
  • Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

Teaching

Research interests

  • Forensic interviewing with children
  • Children’s eyewitness testimony
  • Understanding the impact of and reaction to abuse disclosures by peers, whānau/family and others who a child may talk to

Kia ora koutou. I am a researcher and clinical psychologist, with interests in child development. My research focuses on how children learn, remember and/or report their experiences, and the ways that the people who question them about their experiences can help or hinder how well children remember and talk about things that happened to them. Our research considers the application of psychological science to formal and informal everyday contexts where adults talk to children (e.g., medical settings, classrooms, investigative interviews). We also work in teams that consider how digital device use, psychological interventions and mental health difficulties may contribute to healthy sleep in young people.

Current research studies focus on understanding how young people, parents and teachers might talk with a young person who disclosed abuse, and what support needs they have. I collaborate with researchers from other departments here and abroad on projects relating to children’s use of temporal language when recalling past events, children’s recall of the COVID-19 lockdowns, and people’s perceptions of witness testimony.

Publications

Brown, D. A., & Lamb, M. E. (2025). Children as witnesses: Remembering, reporting, and reliability. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 7(1), 243-265. doi: 10.1146/annurev-devpsych-111323-113323 Journal - Research Article

Lin, C.-C., du Plooy, K., Gray, A., Brown, D., Hobbs, L., Patterson, T., Tan, V., … Hsu, C.-W. (2024). The performance of ChatGPT on short-answer questions in a psychiatry examination: A pilot study. Taiwanese Journal of Psychiatry, 38(2), 94-98. doi: 10.4103/TPSY.TPSY_19_24 Journal - Research Other

Jackson, R., Gu, C., Haszard, J., Meredith-Jones, K., Galland, B., Camp, J., Brown, D., & Taylor, R. (2024). The effect of prebedtime behaviors on sleep duration and quality in children: Protocol for a randomized crossover trial. JMIR Research Protocols, 13, e63692. doi: 10.2196/63692 Journal - Research Other

Brown, D., Muller, D., Fangupo, L., & Jackson, R. (2023). Sleep better to feel good: The role of sleep in wellbeing. Proceedings of the New Zealand Branch of the Australasian Sleep Association (ASA) Sleep in Aotearoa Annual Scientific Meeting. Retrieved from https://sleep.org.au Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Abstract

Brown, D. A., & Lamb, M. E. (2022). Interviewing children about their experiences. In R. Roesch (Ed.), Routledge resources online: Psychology in the real world: Psychology and law. (Online ed.) Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780367198459-REPRW183-1 Chapter in Book - Research

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