Dr Victoria Smy (CPsychol, FHEA) is a cognitive psychologist with extensive expertise in training, decision making, technology integration, teamwork, and workforce performance metrics. With over a decade of experience working in defence, she has established a strong track record as both an educator and applied researcher, contributing panDefence assets that have shaped training policy, design, and evaluation. 

Her research spans human cognition, decision support, and humancentric design, with particular focus on mapping cognitive demands to task requirements, optimising workload and performance, and enhancing skill acquisition and retention. She has delivered major defence funded projects for the UK Ministry of Defence, Dstl, and industry partners, producing exploitable outputs including training interventions, cognitives support tools, teamwork measurement protocols, and behavioural analytics frameworks. 

Her present research interests include generating complex cognitive skillsets, human-autonomy optimisation, and teamwork capability in cyber protection.

Qualifications

• Fellow Higher Education (FHEA), Cranfield University (2024)

• Chartered Psychologist, British Psychological Society (2015)

• PhD Cognitive Psychology (2013), MSc Occupational Psychology (2008), BSc Psychology (2007) - Cardiff University (2007)

Research Interests:

• Training: Needs analysis, design, delivery, assessment & attitudes
• Workforce capability assessment: skill fade, refresher training assessment/planning
• Teamwork: Processes, evolution, training & assessment
• Decision-Making & Support: Cognitive decisional science; decision support systems; biases & barriers; wargaming
• Expertise: Pattern recognition/Sensemaking, decision analysis/support, metacognition
• Subject matter expert consultation: Requirements specification; cognitive work analysis; knowledge elicitation/audit in support of training design
• Cyberpsychology: Human dimensions of cyber, human-autonomy teaming, AI adoption
• Human-Computer Interaction: Problem-solving, adoption/resistance, training tactics
• Occupational Attitudes: Decision styles, motivation, resilience, satisfaction

Publications:

• Cahillane, M., Anderson, T., MacLean, P., and Smy, V. (2025). Competence retention analysis: A technique for predicting and managing retention within organizational training design and delivery. Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making (online), https://doi.org/10.1177/i555343425137244
• MacLean, P., Cahillane, M., & Smy, V. (2024). Lifting the lid on manipulative website contents: A framework mapping contextual and informational feature combinations against associated social cognitive vulnerabilities. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 18(2), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12947
• Smy, V., Cahillane, M., MacLean, P., Hilton, M., & Humphreys, L. (2021). Evaluating teamwork development in combat settings: An exploratory case study utilising the Junior Leaders’ Field Gun competition. Applied Ergonomics, 95, 103458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2021.103459
• Cahillane, M., MacLean, P., & Smy, V. (2019). Novel application of a predictive skill retention model to technical VLE content production skills among Higher Education teachers: A Case Study, Interactive Learning Environments, 27(3), 336-348, https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2018.1474231
• Smy, V., Cahillane, M., & MacLean, P. (2016). Sensemaking and metacognitive prompting in ill-structured problems. International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, 33(3), 159-171, http://doi.org/10.1108/IJILT-10-2015-0027
• Smy, V., Shelton, K., Tombs, M., & Patrick, J. (2016). Transformational instructor behaviour and motivation to learn: A mediated model. Le Travail Humain, 79(2), 169-185, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44651903
• Smy, V., Seeby, H., & Patrick, J. (2015). The nature of complexity facing novice designers in a constraint satisfaction task. Ergonomics, 58(6), 943-952, https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2014.1001447
• Patrick, J., Ahmed, A., Smy, V., Seeby, H., & Sambrooks, K. (2015). A cognitive procedure for representation change in verbal insight problems. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41(3), 746-759, https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000045
• Patrick, J., Morgan, P. L., Smy, V., Tiley, L., Seeby, H., Patrick, T., & Evans, J. (2015). The influence of past experience and the current environment on memory strategy. Memory and Cognition, 4(5)3, 775-787, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0501-3
• Patrick, J., Smy, V., Tombs, M., & Shelton, K.H. (2012). Being in one's chosen job determines pre-training attitudes and training outcomes. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 85(2), 245-257,  https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8325.2011.02027.x

PhD Supervision: 

Dr Smy is happy to consider PhD proposals aligned to her research areas.

PhD Adrien Jouis - Retention of Complex Cognitive Skill (2023-2026)