Rate My Professor Megan Spencer-Smith

Dr. Megan Spencer-Smith is a Senior Lecturer in developmental psychology at the School of Psychological Sciences and the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University. She serves as Director of Undergraduate Education (on campus) in the School of Psychological Sciences. Spencer-Smith completed her undergraduate training in psychology at the University of Queensland in 2003 and earned her PhD in child neuropsychology at the University of Melbourne in 2008 under Professors Vicki Anderson and Peter Anderson. During her doctoral studies, she held a Harold Mitchell Research Fellowship for three months at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, with Professor Maureen Dennis. Her postdoctoral career included research positions at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute from 2008 to 2011 and the University of Melbourne in 2009, followed by a Swiss National Science Foundation Visiting Fellowship at Inselspital, Bern University Hospital in 2011 with Professor Regula Everts, and a Department of Neuroscience Research Fellowship at the Karolinska Institute from 2011 to 2013 with Professor Torkel Klingberg. She established her independent research group at Monash University in 2014 and holds an Honorary Senior Research Fellow position at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute since 2011.

Spencer-Smith's research explores cognitive plasticity in childhood across three key themes: the efficacy of cognitive training programs, such as working memory training in primary school children with long-term follow-up; neurobehavioral outcomes in children with agenesis of the corpus callosum (AgCC) through the largest cohort study incorporating neuroimaging and neurobehavioral data; and developmental trajectories of cognition and behavior in very preterm-born children via the VIBeS longitudinal cohort study. Her influential publications include 'Do children really recover better? Neurobehavioural plasticity after early brain insult' (Brain, 2011), 'Childhood brain insult: can age at insult help us predict outcome?' (Brain, 2009), 'Benefits of a working memory training program for inattention in daily life: a systematic review and meta-analysis' (PLoS One, 2015), and 'Academic outcomes 2 years after working memory training for children with low working memory: a randomized clinical trial' (JAMA Pediatrics, 2016). She has received the School of Psychological Sciences Education Excellence Award (2024), Monash University Jenny Redman Early Career Research Publication Prize for Psychological Sciences (2016), Karolinska Institute Department of Neuroscience Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2011), and Harold Mitchell Travelling Fellowship (2011). Spencer-Smith has served as an invited speaker at conferences such as the World Congress on ADHD (2021) and Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society conferences (2018, 2025).