Brian Young’s Brief Bio

I am a developmental psychologist and my first job was as research assistant for

Margaret Donaldson at the University of Edinburgh on a project looking at cognitive
and linguistic development in children which led to her book on Children’s Minds. I
spent seven years lecturing at the University of Hong Kong and obtained a PhD there
on Chinese-English bilingualism together with some invaluable life experience and a
smattering of Cantonese. My interests in cross-cultural psychology led me to a post
in a Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Salford together
with my first large research grant from the old Health Education Council looking at
the role of food advertising in the aetiology of dental caries. I moved to the
University of Exeter in 1989 where I have been ever since (people rarely move from
the South West for various reasons). I developed an interest in economic psychology
as the School of Psychology there has an international reputation in that area.
Relevant book publications include authorship of Television Advertising and
Children published by Oxford University Press in 1990, co-authorship of The
Economic Psychology of Everyday Life (2001; Psychology Press) and co-editorship
of The Faces of Televisual Media: Teaching, Violence, Selling to Children (2003;
Erlbaum). I have published many academic papers and acted as consultant for the
HEC, MAFF, Advertising Association, Food Standards Agency, and various firms. I
edit Young Consumers, published by Emerald.
I am interested in theories of promotional or ‘interested’ communication using
pragmatic theory in linguistics and establishing a developmental psychology of how
children acquire an understanding of these communicative forms – that would be my
‘project’ in the future I guess.