Wednesday, 10 December 2014

Cognitive Psychology Colloquium Thursday 10th December

When: Thursday 11th December, 12-1pm
Where: Keats Reading Room, Psychology Building

What: Rachel Vickery's PhD Confirmation Seminar  

Criterion setting has been largely assumed and unexplored in psychology. Traditionally criteria are used in signal detection models to distinguish between the presence or absence of stimuli on a given trial or in decision making models to quantify the decision criterion or threshold. This thesis will investigate criterion setting via two experimental streams; 1) Best-Worst choice scaling in recognition memory, and 2) Trial-to trial changes in speed accuracy tradeoff criterion settings. The aim of this thesis is to provide insight into criterion setting using different experimental paradigms and analysis methods and to also determine the time course of criterion setting.

Wednesday, 3 December 2014

Synergy Between UON School of Psychology and HNE Health Makes a Great 2014 Psychology Professional Day



During this year’s Psychology Week, UoN School of Psychology successfully hosted and co-organised with Hunter New England Health the largest Psychology Professional Day in the Hunter. More than 200 psychologists and psychology trainees gathered together on campus from the Health Service, the University, private practice, government agencies and NGOs for a day of professional development on promoting clinical excellence and culturally respectful practices.

Psychology across the lifespan was the key theme of this year’s conference. The key note speaker A/Professor Ross Wilkinson from UoN School of Psychology has been a ‘big draw’ card for this year’s conference. Ross is a very experienced and respected clinician and academic in the area of attachment across the lifespan; he kept the audience together despite stratospheric temperatures on the day!



The UoN School of Psychology's  
key note speaker: A/Prof Ross Wilkinson


Several members of staff, postgraduate, and undergraduate students attended and played an active role in the day, including the zealous members of our vibrant psychology society. Simon Dennis welcomed the conference delegates on behalf of the school and psychology clinic at the beginning of the day. On the day Frini Karayanidis and Kerry Chalmers convened a stimulating symposium on Newcastle-led research on lifespan psychology. Tanya Hanstock has run a well-attended and engaging workshop on Parent Child Interaction. Tony Kemp has offered continuous AV assistance on the lead to the conference and on the day and Stefania Paolini, as active member of the conference organising committee, has acted as a key conduit between HNE and UoN. 

The conference showcased the great talent of psychologists we have locally, demonstrated the varied areas of clinical excellence in practice, and stressed the importance of effective interaction between educators in the school, psychologists working in the community, and the needs of diverse clients.

This year’s event has been a nice demonstration of the psychologists from HNE Health service and The University of Newcastle working together. We look forward to newer opportunities in the future!

Monday, 1 December 2014

Cognitive Psychology Colloquium Thursday 4th December

When: Thursday 4th December, 12-1pm
Where: Keats Reading Room, Psychology Building

What: Gabriel Tilman's PhD Confirmation Seminar 


How Do Our Past Decisions Affect Our Present Decisions? – An Innovative Model

In simple perceptual experiments responses made on a trial are influenced by responses
made on previous trials: a phenomenon known as sequential effects. The dominant
explanation of sequential effects is the conflict monitoring theory (Botvinick, Braver,
Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001), which assumes individuals possesses an explicit conflict
monitoring mechanism. Here innovative models are proposed, which can account for
sequential effects without the need of a ’intelligent’ mechanism. The two models will be
adapted from the Linear Ballistic Accumulator (LBA) and the Drift Diffusion Model
(DDM). The models will be fit to data from the Flanker, Simon and Stroop tasks. The
capacity of both models to account for three prominent sequential effects – the conflict
frequency effect, sequential dependency, and post-error slowing – are compared.