Staff profile

About Me

I obtained my undergraduate degree in Japanese and Mandarin from the University of Tasmania in 2008, and my Master's degree in Applied Linguistics from Nanjing Normal University in 2013. I completed my DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford in 2018, where I researched how infants learn colour words and what that means for their colour perception. From there I moved to the University of East Anglia as a postdoc, working on early visual working memory with Professor John Spencer. My research at Durham focuses on the interplay between early cognition and word learning in infants, looking particularly at the links between cognition, environmental factors and early word learning.

I also carry out work in metascience and am an advocate of Open Scholarship, developing pipelines and software for researchers to use.

• Infant development
• Early word learning
• Developmental cognitive neuroscience

• Developmental Science

• 2023: Software Sustainability Institute Fellow:
• 2022: Topic Editor at Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS):

Conference Paper

• Forbes, Samuel H. & Plunkett, Kim (2017), Early Colour Word Learning in British Infants, The Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. London, UK.

Journal Article

• Fibla, Laia, Forbes, Samuel H., McCarthy, Jordan, Mee, Kate, Magnotta, Vincent, Deoni, Sean, Cameron, Donnie & Spencer, John P. (2023). Language exposure and brain myelination in early development. The Journal of Neuroscience
• Forbes, Samuel H. & Plunkett, Kim (2023). Colour perception changes with basic colour word comprehension. Developmental Science
• Bakopoulou, Milena, Lorenz, Megan G., Forbes, Samuel H., Tremlin, Rachel, Bates, Jessica & Samuelson, Larissa K. (2023). Vocabulary and automatic attention: The relation between novel words and gaze dynamics in noun generalization. Developmental Science
• Spencer, John P, Forbes, Samuel H, Naylor, Sophie, Singh, Vinay P, Jackson, Kiara, Deoni, Sean, Tiwari, Madhuri & Kumar, Aarti (2023). Poor air quality is associated with impaired visual cognition in the first two years of life: A longitudinal investigation. eLife 12: e83876.
• Forbes, Samuel H., Aneja, Prerna & Guest, Olivia (2022). The myth of normative development. Infant and Child Development
• Visser, Ingmar, Bergmann, Christina, Byers-Heinlein, Krista, Dal Ben, Rodrigo, Duch, Wlodzislaw, Forbes, Samuel, Franchin, Laura, Frank, Michael C., Geraci, Alessandra, Hamlin, J. Kiley, Kaldy, Zsuzsa, Kulke, Louisa, Laverty, Catherine, Lew-Williams, Casey, Mateu, Victoria, Mayor, Julien, Moreau, David, Nomikou, Iris, Schuwerk, Tobias, Simpson, Elizabeth A., Singh, Leher, Soderstrom, Melanie, Sullivan, Jessica, van den Heuvel, Marion I., Westermann, Gert, Yamada, Yuki, Zaadnoordijk, Lorijn & Zettersten, Martin (2022). Improving the generalizability of infant psychological research: The ManyBabies model. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45.
• Defenderfer, Jessica, Forbes, Samuel, Wijeakumar, Sobanawartiny, Hedrick, Mark, Plyler, Patrick & Buss, Aaron T. (2021). Frontotemporal activation differs between perception of simulated cochlear implant speech and speech in background noise: An image-based fNIRS study. NeuroImage 240: 118385.
• Forbes, Samuel H., Wijeakumar, Sobanawartiny, Eggebrecht, Adam T., Magnotta, Vincent A. & Spencer, John P. (2021). Processing pipeline for image reconstructed fNIRS analysis using both MRI templates and individual anatomy. Neurophotonics 8(02): 025010.
• Abdelwahab, Alshaimaa Gaber Salah, Forbes, Samuel, Cattani, Allegra, Goslin, Jeremy & Floccia, Caroline (2021). An Adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI in 17 Arabic Dialects for Children Aged 8 to 30 Months. Language Learning and Development 17(4): 425.
• Forbes, Samuel H. & Plunkett, Kim (2021). The development of contour processing abilities in the second year. Developmental Psychology 57(5): 639.
• Forbes, Samuel H. (2020). PupillometryR: An R package for preparing and analysing pupillometry data. Journal of Open Source Software 5(50): 2285.
• Delgado Reyes, Lourdes, Wijeakumar, Sobanawartiny, Magnotta, Vincent A., Forbes, Samuel H. & Spencer, John P. (2020). The functional brain networks that underlie visual working memory in the first two years of life. NeuroImage 219: 116971.
• Forbes, Samuel H. & Plunkett, Kim (2020). Linguistic and Cultural Variation in Early Color Word Learning. Child Development 91(1): 28.
• Forbes, Samuel H. & Plunkett, Kim (2019). The role of colour labels in mediating toddler visual attention. Cognition 186: 159-170.
• Forbes, Samuel H. & Plunkett, Kim (2019). Infants show early comprehension of basic color words. Developmental Psychology 55(2): 240-249.
• Liang, DanDan, Song, Yiqi & Forbes, Samuel H. (2015). 汉英儿童故事讲述任务中完成体使用的对比研究. 外语教学与研究 47(1).