PSY600 Psychology Research Projects. Some examples

Transcription

1 PSY600 Psychology Research Projects Some examples

2 Dr Frederike Beyer Social and Cognitive Neuroscience Learning in social contexts Social cognition and empathy Sense of agency and motivation

3 Suggested projects Outcome-driven learning in social and nonsocial contexts Uncertainty while selecting and making an action can be increased due to the presence of other people, as well as by non-social influences. How are these different sources of uncertainty related to learning based on action outcomes? Influence of fear and anger on social cognition Fear and anger are negative, high-arousal emotions that influence cognition. Compared to fear, however, anger is inherently a social emotion. How do these different emotions affect social cognition, as perspective taking and empathy? Development of appetitive motivation with low and high sense of agency Stimuli associated with reward acquire appetitive motivational properties. How is this effect influenced by a sense of control over the reward? Ø Projects can be done in pairs. Experiments can be designed to be purely behavioural, or to include EEG measures.

4 Dr Caroline Brennan Genetics of Behaviour General Interests Addiction Biology Genetics of addiction Animal models of cognition Cognitive ageing Dr Brennan s research is based both in the Fogg Building and in the Bancroft Building.

5 Final Year Projects Candidate gene expression analysis in wildtype and genetic mutants (2-4 students). RNA in situ hybridisation analysis of spatial gene expression in embryonic and adult zebrafish. (2U Practical). Can be undertaken either over the summer or during term time. Neurobiology of developmental drug exposure (2-4 students). Analysis of the effect of developmental exposure to drugs of abuse on juvenile and adult behaviour (1-2 students, must be undertaken during the summer. Inflexible wrt hours) Analysis of the effect of developmental exposure to drugs on gene expression (1-2 students, can be undertaken during term time) Using fish to explore mechanisms of cognitive control (2 students) Can fish do matching to sample? (1 student) Analysis of memory and learning in wildtype and mutant zebrafish lines (1 student) MUST be undertaken over the summer. Inflexible wrt hours- i.e. everyday as behavioural studies TAKE TIME!!!!!!!

6 Prof. Lars Chittka Comparative Cognition Sensory Systems, Learning and Memory, Animal Cognition

7 Prof. David Clayton Neuroscience, Genomics and Ethology General Interests Speech, language and communication How social factors influence perception and well-being Comparative cognition Behavioural epigenetics

8 Projects for Psychology Students As a project supervisor, my emphasis will be on helping students develop their own project ideas. Themes of particular interest in my own research me are shown on the previous page but I m willing to consider any idea that students bring forward.

9 Dr Tiina Eilola Cognitive Psychology Language and emotions Bilingualism Culture, emotions and morality

10 Dr Tiina Eilola Sample projects: 1. Emotional impact of first and second language in bilingual speakers Aim: To better understand how the bilinguals two languages differ from each other in their emotional impact 2. Biculturalism and morality Aim: To examine the impact of cultural schemas on moral judgements 3. Emotional meaning in music and language Aim: To better understand how emotional meaning in music can affect recognition of the emotional meaning in language

11 Dr Nathan Emery Cognitive Evolution General Interests Comparative Cognition & Behaviour Psychology of Board Games Drawing, Imagination, Creativity & Play Please Dr Emery directly to discuss details of projects

12 Suggested final year projects Cognition of the Tower of London ravens Students will record behaviour of the Tower ravens or run experiments on their responses to novelty, personality, number, eye gaze or problem-solving Ethological analysis of adult human play Students will record the behaviour of adults playing in two contexts: spontaneous (free form) play, such as playing LEGO or structured (rule-based) play, such as playing board games. They will develop an ethogram of adult human play behaviour using quantitative methods to compare different actions used during these two contexts. Cognitive analysis of board games Modern board games have the potential to benefit individuals with mental health problems, especially the elderly that cannot engage with video games. By categorising the specific cognitive abilities required to play different types of board games, such as strategy, social deduction, storytelling and cooperative, the student/s will provide important information for the development of targeted gaming interventions. Does drawing enhance memory? Recent studies have found that taking visual rather than purely written notes aids in the recall of complex information. Even doodling during lectures enhances information retention. Sketchnotes was developed as a tool for summarizing large amounts of information presented in lectures to ease later retrieval. Subjects will be trained in the use of this method and their ability to retain information compared to subjects using traditional note-taking techniques.

13 Dr Sevasti Foka Social Psychology General Interests Positive emotions and PPT Effectiveness of wellbeing mentoring and Positive Psychotherapy techniques

14 Final Year Projects Mental health and emotional wellbeing of sixth-form students Examining the impact of wellbeing mentoring and positive psychotherapy techniques on resilience, perceptions of stress, stress symptoms and depression of sixth form students. Broaden-and-built theory Exploring the impact of cultivating positive emotions on coping with academic stress among sixth form students.

15 Dr Kristin Hadfield Research areas: Child and adolescent development Particularly: how adversity impacts health and development Resilience Family relationships Migration and forced displacement

16 Example projects Parent-child relationships Investigate associations between family characteristics and parent-child relationship quality Romantic relationships and family time Investigate what the effects of relationship breakup are on the time that family members spend together Service use and migration Investigate a service targeting migrants, to determine if migrants view that service as impacting their health and wellbeing Families post-migration/displacement Investigate associations between post-migration/displacement factors and strong family bonds Resilience Examine the psychometric properties of different measures of resilience as predictors of health and wellbeing during adversity

17 Dr Emily Hannon General Interests: Attention; Memory; Perception Attentional Biases in Anxiety

18 Possible project titles: The role of context in the interpretation of ambiguous facial expressions Anxious individuals tend to use contextual information when faced with ambiguous situations. Here you will examine how positive, negative or neutral images prime the interpretation of ambiguous facial expressions. Cognitive Control and Anxiety Individual differences in working memory capacity underlie differences in the ability to inhibit task irrelevant stimuli. Anxiety reduces this ability. Here you would examine differences in working memory, anxiety and reaction times in e.g. an emotional Stroop task. Ø Locus of control and anomalistic beliefs Those with an internal locus of control are thought to feel they have more control over events in lives. Those with an external locus of control may attribute events in their lives as being as a result of fate, luck or attributable to a higher being. Perception of coincidences and beliefs in paranormal phenomena may be affected by these individual differences. I am happy to supervise other projects that students may like to research that closely fits my research interests.

19 Dr. Janelle Jones Social Psychology General Interests: Social Groups, Identity, Resilience, Health & Well-being

20 Projects*: 1. Self-Complexity & Resilience (2 spots available: Will work as a pair) Do the ways that people think about themselves (e.g., single versus multiple traits, roles, relationships, groups) influence their ability to face mental and/or physical challenges? 2. Groups, Meaning & Well-being (2 spots available; Will work as a pair) How do people create meaning within dyads/groups (e.g., strangers, friends, romantic relationships)? Is this related to their perceived well-being 3. The Arts & Ageing (up to 2 spots available; Will work alone or as a pair) Does participating in an arts-based community intervention influence engagement, health and well-being outcomes for older adults? 4. Social Invisibility (up to 2 spots available; Will work alone or as a pair) What determines whether people fail to attend to and/or process others in social settings? In social interactions? * You will be expected to participate in weekly group meetings. Meetings are MANDATORY. In these meetings you will learn/review project skills, present your ideas and work at various stages, and engage in peer review; You will be expected to complete your preliminary literature search, study design and ethics forms over the summer to start data collection in Semester A.

21 Dr Robert Keers Biological psychiatry General Interests Psychiatric genetics, gene-environment interaction, Resilience, Health and Wellbeing, pharmacogenomics, personalized medicine.

22 Example Projects Psychotic-like experiences Although psychotic disorders are rare, it has been suggested that up to 28% of the population report psychotic-like experiences In this project you will explore risk factors for psychotic-like experiences and associations with sleep, anxiety and depression symptoms Circadian rhythms, stress and psychopathology Individuals differ in their circadian rhythm. Some have a more advanced cycle morningness. However, others have a delayed cycle eveningness which is associated with an increased risk of sleep problems, depression and reduced resilience to stress In this project you will investigate the relationships between circadian rhythm, stress, psychopathology and wellbeing Practicing gratitude High trait levels of gratitude have been linked to both psychological and physical well-being In this project you will investigate the effects of a new intervention aimed at increasing gratitude on well-being and depression symptoms

23 Dr Robert Lachlan Cultural evolution & communication General interests: Evolution of cultural transmission Animal communication Vocal & social learning

24 Projects Social learning on escalators (2 students) We have to make decisions many times a week about which side of an escalator to stand on. This project examines how those decisions are influenced by the social information available to us: do we copy other people? And if so, who? Cultural transmission of bottlenose dolphin whistles (2 students) This project examines how dolphins develop their signature whistles examining data-sets of dolphin whistles from Florida to examine the role of signature whistles in dolphins social lives (No trip to Florida included sadly) Cultural evolution of fads in song lyrics (2 students) This project will survey song lyrics from recent pop music searching for neologisms. The spread and decline of these words will be modeled with cultural evolutionary methods. Perceptual biases and body image (2 students) We have recently discovered evidence for a perceptual bias in which young women perceive bodies that they see as thinner than they really are. We would like to follow this up to examine how general this effect is: do men show it? Do older women?

25 Dr Caroline Di Bernardi Luft General Interests Learning Creativity Brain-body interactions Psychophysiology

26 Example Projects 1. Learning from mistakes: these projects will address questions related to how humans learn from their own performance outcomes. Ø Ø On being hard on yourself: how does having high or low standards for performance affects learning? (computer based behavioural studies 2 students) On learning rhythms: can we boost learning through transcranial alternating current brain stimulation (tacs)? (brain stimulation studies 2 students) 2. Creative Problem Solving: these projects will address questions such as how humans solve problems that require to think out of the box. Ø Bad ideas: can we make people get stuck with the wrong solutions? What are the effects of priming wrong associations on creativity? Is verbal fluency associated with creativity in verbal and nonverbal tasks? (behavioural studies 2 students) Ø The prepared mind: the role of alpha oscillations on creative problem solving (EEG study 1 student). Can we predict a successful solution based on the EEG? The EEG recording will be combined with physiological recordings (GSR, ECG, etc.) to investigate the psychophysiological markers of insight (Psychophysiological 1 student). These two projects require dedication and team work for data collection.

27 Dr Isabelle Mareschal How does the human visual system process sensory information? Experimental Studies, Eye Tracking In Humans

28 Sample Projects : 1) Attractiveness: what affects our judgments of attractiveness? 1) Names and attractiveness: do certain names make people look more attractive? 2) Facial emotions: how do we perceive emotions in other people? 1) Other- and same- race effects: are we better at judging features (e.g. age; direction of gaze, etc ) in people of the same race as us? 5) Gaze perception: how do we judge where people are looking? 6) Crowding: how bad is our vision in the periphery and why don t we notice? 7) Symmetry perception: do we prefer symmetry in images/ do we find symmetry more attractive?

29 Dr Magda Osman Cognitive Psychology General Interests 1. Decision-making 2. Unconscious processes (priming) 3. Pro-social behaviours 4. Gambling

30 Sample of final Year Projects Understanding the role of money primes The project involves presenting people with subliminal primes and looking at the effects on their behaviour Examining the role of complex learning and decision-making in the real world The project involves a task (computer-based) in which people have to work collaboratively or individually to figure out the best decisions to make Understanding cooperation The project involves looking at the impact of different types of status or personal values on pro-social behaviours Understanding gambling The project involves examining the connection between illusion of control and gambling

31 Dr Michael Pluess General Areas: Developmental Psychology Environmental Sensitivity Psychological Well-Being Personality Spirituality/Religion Organisation: 6 mandatory group meetings First meeting in April/May Students will work on projects (planning and preparation) over the Summer

32 Project Examples Environmental Sensitivity Investigate associations between High Sensitive Personality and the emotional and physiological response to Virtual Reality Psychological Well-Being Investigate associations between people s individual values and psychological well-being Religion and Spirituality Investigate the frequency of prayer among students and associations with their well-being Emotional Maturity Investigate individual differences in emotional maturity among students and associations with the quality of their relationships

33 Dr. Elke Vlemincx General interests: Respiration Psychophysiology Biofeedback Health & well-being Positive psychology

34 Research projects Taking a deep breath, or sighing, flexibly reorients our attention and makes us more alert. This way, sighs may improve our perceptual accuracy and cognitive performance. The following projects test these hypotheses: Sighs and perceptual accuracy Ø Sighs and perception of external signals (e.g. visual or tactile stimuli) Ø Sighs and perception of internal signals (e.g. heart rate or respiratory sensations) Sighs and cognitive performance (e.g. memory, flexibility) Although most relaxation techniques involve explicit breathing instructions (e.g. take a deep breath, slow your breathing), there is only little evidence to support the relaxing effects of these instructions. The following project aims to empirically test the effect of instructed breathing on relaxation: Breathing patterns and relaxation All the above projects will include psychophysiological data collection, which will be carried out individually after extensive training by the supervisor. Data collection will start in the beginning of Semester A, so the study design and ethics have to be completed before then.