JUST PUBLISHED: A Trial to Evaluate the Efficacy of an Integrated Smoking Cessation Intervention among Mental Health Patients

Depending on diagnosis and setting, between 33 and 90 per cent of people with mental illness smoke tobacco, both in Australia and worldwide. As a result, tobacco-related diseases are one of the leading causes of mortality among this population subgroup. A paucity of research to date has examined the efficacy of cessation strategies to assist people with mental illness to quit smoking. However, limited findings have suggested that aids that have been found to be effective for the general population of smokers, including counselling and nicotine replacement therapy, are also efficacious for people with mental illness. The introduction of smoke free policies within mental health inpatient settings in Australia and other countries has created an opportunity to intervene and address the health and social inequities experienced by people with acute mental illness. An admission to a smoke-free psychiatric inpatient facility, where nicotine dependence was adequately treated, has been shown to increase patient self-efficacy to make longer term changes to their smoking. However without the provision of support post discharge, preadmission smoking levels typically resume.

To assess the efficacy of integrating inpatient smoking care with community based support upon discharge, a randomised controlled trial is being undertaken across four mental health inpatient settings within the Hunter New England Local Health District, New South Wales, Australia.  All inpatients will be approached, assessed for eligibility and, if applicable, offered the opportunity to participate. All adult inpatients that smoked and had the capacity to give consent were eligible, regardless of their readiness to change or diagnosis. At the time of recruitment, participants were allocated to receive either standard hospital care or 16 weeks of support post discharge (consisting of NRT and supportive telephone calls).

As follow-up data collection is not yet complete, the outcomes of this trial have not been ascertained. However, analysis of process data suggests this project was well received by mental health inpatients; a finding that is contrary to current beliefs surrounding persons with mental illness receptivity to the offer of smoking care.  Of the 2,317 patients approached, 91% agreed to discuss smoking with the research staff and, of the eligible patients, on average 65-70% agreed to participate (N = 754). Among the participants who were eligible to receive support post discharge (n= 379), 84% opted to utilise psychosocial and/or pharmacological support in the community. These findings suggest that people with mental illness are receptive to the offer of smoking cessation care and choose to utilise such care when offered.

For further information, please see the following article:

Metse, A., Bowman, J., Wye, P., Stockings, E., Adams, M., Clancy, R., Terry, M., Wolfenden, L., Freund, M., Allan, J., Prochaska, J., & Wiggers, J. (2014). Evaluating the efficacy of an integrated smoking cessation intervention for mental health patients: Study protocol for a randomised controlled trial Trials, 15 (266), 1-7 DOI: 10.1186/1745-6215-15-266

or contact Alex Metse.

JUST PUBLISHED: The Dance of Communication: Retaining Family Membership Despite Non-Speech Dementia

As the majority of people in developed countries will be touched in some way by dementia in the 21st century, current ways of interacting in dementia care may no longer be acceptable. In particular, when people with dementia appear uncommunicative, their retained awareness and ability to interact is often dismissed or overlooked. Facing social isolation and further decline, many languish with unmet needs for human interaction. However, the intimacies of family interaction in dementia care settings point to a brighter future.

A recently published article by Bruce Walmsley and Lynne McCormack filmed speech and non-speech relational communication within families that included a member with severe dementia and limited or absent speech. Exploring the phenomenon of retained awareness, the researchers sought to understand the reciprocal efforts used by all family members to engage in alternative patterns of communication.

Interactive patterns revealed ‘in-step’ interactions that stimulated spontaneity and reciprocity and ‘out-of-step’ interactions that heightened frustration and anxiety. Family interactions could be ‘in-step’ and ‘out-of-step’ depending on relatives’ presumptions of awareness, timing of response, perceived interpretation, and what appeared to be pre-existing relational patterns. This study also found that retained awareness may exist at a level previously unrecognised in people with minimal or absent speech as a result of severe dementia. Awareness fluctuated from sensory and perceptual levels to complex movement, goal directed behaviour and self-awareness.

This study recognised the difficulty of interpreting awareness related to individual experience, especially in light of minimal speech. However, interactions and expressions of emotion were considered to represent underlying awareness in light of the observed family interactions. By exploring the lived experience of families, it revealed the efforts and willingness of all family members to retain family membership. As a pilot study, it offered a platform for future studies exploring changes in awareness and communication as individuals move from moderate to severe dementia. Importantly, this study reminds us that people with dementia may be more aware and communicative than first assumed. 

For more information about this work please see the following journal article:

Walmsley, B., D., & McCormack, L. (2014). The dance of communication: Retaining family membership despite severe non-speech dementia Dementia, 13 (5), 626-641 DOI: 10.1177/1471301213480359

or contact Dr Lynne McCormack at Lynne.McCormack@newcastle.edu.au

JUST PUBLISHED: Decision Making on the Go: The Case of Australian Football League Umpires

Welcome back to the Just Published section of the School of Psychology's Newsline. Hot off the press this month is work by PhD candidate Nathan Elsworthy and his colleagues. Below Nathan explains his recently published research:

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Believe it or not, Australian Football League (AFL) umpires are human...they do make mistakes (only about 6 per game). Umpires award about 44 free kicks per game, with many other decisions (about 2,000) often going unnoticed. So 6 errors out of about 2,000 decisions is pretty good! This is even more impressive when you consider the physical aspect of their role, whereby they cover between 10-12 km per game. Low intensity exercise has been shown to be beneficial to cognitive performance, however, at near maximal intensities such as those often completed by umpires, the ability to correctly perceive perceptual information is limited. As such, our study examined how the position and movement of an AFL umpire may impact their decision-making accuracy.

Umpire coaches review every free kick decision made by the umpire and classify them as correct, missed or unwarranted. We used this information to identify when and where free kicks were awarded, and to identify the umpire movement at this time. This approach identified the instantaneous speed when a decision was made, and how far they were positioned from play. We also assessed their movement demands prior to a free kick being awarded by examining the GPS devices worn by umpires during these games.

Umpires were often positioned between 15-20 m from the ball when a free kick was awarded, however this did not impact on their decision-making accuracy, nor did their movement speed at the time of a decision. However, increased running speed 5 seconds prior to a decision resulted in a greater likelihood of an error being made. These increased running demands may elicit various physiological changes, which negatively impact the umpires’ information processing abilities. So, although umpires make the correct decision in most circumstances, this study identified that by limiting their high intensity activity, they may be less likely to make an error.

For more information about this research, please contact Nathan Elsworthy and/or check out the following journal article:

Elsworthy, N., Burke, D., Scott, B., Stevens, C., & Dascombe, B. (2014). Physical and decision-making demands of Australian football umpires during competitive matches Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 14 (2), 401-410 DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000000567

Stop-Signal Task: Methods, Statistics, and Applications.

The School of Psychology is proudly hosting a talk by Dr. Dora Matzke,
Department of Psychological Methods, University van Amsterdam. See
the attached flyer for details, including:

TITLE: A Bayesian parametric approach for the estimation of stop-signal
reaction time distributions.

WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 13th March 12-1pm, AVLG17 (videoconferenced to room AV3 in Ourimbah).

ABSTRACT: The cognitive concept of response inhibition is frequently measured using the stop-signal paradigm. In this paradigm, participants perform a two-choice reaction time task where, on some of the trials, the primary task is interrupted by a stop-signal that instructs participants to withhold their response. The dependent variable of interest is the latency of the unobservable stop response (stop signal reaction time or SSRT). Recently, Matzke, Dolan, Logan, Brown and Wagenmakers (2013) have developed a Bayesian parametric approach that allows for the estimation of the entire distribution of SSRTs. The Bayesian parametric approach is based on the assumptions of the horse race model and rests on the concept of censored distributions. The method assumes that SSRTs are ex-Gaussian distributed and uses Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling to obtain posterior distributions for the model parameters. First, I will illustrate the use of the Bayesian parametric approach with published stop-signal data. I will then introduce BEESTS, a user-friendly software implementation of the Bayesian parametric approach that can be applied to individual as well as hierarchical data structures. I will conclude by discussing possible extensions and future research directions.

PRESENTATION: The neuroscience of attention, by Dr. Søren Kyllingsbæk (Copenhagen). Thursday 19th December 10:30am-11:30am

The School of Psychology is proudly hosting a talk by Dr. Søren Kyllingsbæk, Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen.  If you're interested in meeting with Dr. Kyllingsbæk while he visits Newcastle, please email Dr. Ami Eidels (ami.eidels@newcastle.edu.au).


TITLE: A Neural Theory of Visual Attention

WHERE: Keats Reading room (Aviation Building, AVLG17).

WHEN: Thursday 19th December 2013, 10:30am-11:30am.

ABSTRACT: The neural theory of visual attention (NTVA) developed by Bundesen, Habekost, and Kyllingsbæk (2005) is a neural interpretation of Bundesen’s (1990) theory of visual attention (TVA). The theory accounts both for a wide range of attentional effects in human performance (reaction times and error rates) and for a wide range of effects observed in firing rates of single cells in the primate visual system. NTVA provides a mathematical framework to unify the two fields of research—formulas bridging cognition and neurophysiology. I will present NTVA and related new theoretical ideas regarding visual encoding and visual short-term memory.

JUST PUBLISHED: Personal Qualities Assessment Across Cultures

Myself (Miles Bore), Don Munro and David Powis have spent the last 15 years developing and testing personality questionnaires and ability tests for use in the selection of medical students. While much of the focus of our research has been the use of these tests in Australia and the UK, we have also had opportunities to trial the tests in countries where English is not the first language such as Sweden, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, Nepal and Fiji. Recently we were approached by Saharnaz Nedjat from Tehran University of Medical Sciences asking if we would be interested in running the Personal Qualities Assessment tests with her in Iran. We leapt at the chance of course!

We emailed three tests to Tehran for translation into Persian: the Mental Agility Test (a 48-item high powered IQ test), the Mojac Moral Orientation Scale and our Self-Appraisal Inventory which measures the personality traits of Involvement (being empathic, confident with others and not aloof or narcissistic), Resilience (being emotionally stable and not neurotic) and Self-Control (being conscientious and not disorderly). The tests were then back-translated into English so we could check that all 240 questions in the battery, not to mention the instructions for each test, had maintained their original meaning: quite a detailed job! After checking back and forth with Saharnez on a handful of questions that were proving difficult to translate we finally had it all sorted. The real test of this was whether the tests actually worked when given to applicants in Tehran.

The tests were administered to a cohort of medical students at Tehran and the findings reported in a recently published article for the journal Medical Teacher. While the article presents only basic analysis (mean differences between students who entered directly from secondary education compared to those who entered with a tertiary degree) it is the finding that the tests performed reliably when translated into Persian that pleased us most. More detail on that and other cross-cultural comparisons are for another paper.

For more details, please see the following journal article:
Nedjat, S., Bore, M., Majdzadeh, R., Rashidian, A., Munro, D., Powis, D., Karbakhsh, M., & Keshavarz, H. (2013). Comparing the cognitive, personality and moral characteristics of high school and graduate medical entrants to the Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran Medical Teacher, 35 (12), 1632-1637 DOI: 10.3109/0142159X.2013.826791

Further information can be found at the Personal Qualities Assessment website: http://www.pqa.net.au/

SYNERGY BETWEEN UON SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY AND HNE HEALTH MAKES A GREAT 2013 PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSIONAL DAY

On Friday 15^th November, UoN School of Psychology successfully hosted and co-organised with Hunter New England Health the biggest Psychology Professional Day in the Hunter in history. More than 230 psychologists gathered together on campus from the Health Service (50%), the University (20%), private practice (15%), government agencies (14%) and NGOs (2%) for a day of professional development on promoting clinical excellence and culturally respectful practices.

Aboriginal psychology was the key theme of this year’s conference. The key note speaker Professor Judy Atkinson has been a ‘big draw’ card for this year’s conference. She is a very experienced and respected clinician and academic in the area of working with Indigenous clients, particularly children who have experienced trauma. She has an extensive track record in research on transgenerational trauma, which the school has actively incorporated in its undergraduate curriculum for first year psychology students since 2011.

The key note speaker: Prof Judy Atkinson

Several members of staff, postgraduate, and undergraduate students attended and played an active role in the day. Stuart Marlin and Sean Halpin welcomed the conference delegates on behalf of the school and psychology clinic at the beginning of the day. Stefania Paolini, as active member of the conference organising committee, acted as a key conduit between HNE and UoN; on the day she convened a stimulating symposium on Newcastle-led research on Aboriginal wellbeing with Dr Mark Lock and Dr Jo Gwynn from the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health Research which has attracted the participation of a group of very diverse researchers from a variety of disciplinary areas. Sean Halpin has run a well-attended interactive workshop on assessment and diagnosis and Tony Kemp has offered continuous AV assistance on the lead to the conference and on the day and assisted a long list of speakers and workshop facilitators involved n the day. 

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 culturally 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!

Another successful 4th Year Conference

On Monday the 5^th November over 150 fourth year Psychology students and staff piled into buses, trains, and cars and headed to Panthers in Newcastle city to attend and present at the annual fourth year conference.  Honours students presented the results of their year’s research and the audiences were astounded with the quality of the presentations and the excellent research that had been conducted over the year. The annual photograph was taken with much mirth on the part of the photographed. In one presentation, Zisheng Chen explained the results of his study investigating Facebook and addiction to an audience which represented over 90% of the attendees; people were sitting on the floor and squeezing in the door. Karlye Damaso, Laura Wall, Mathew Marchant and Jade Frost won the Best Presentation Awards for their research investigating respectively mismatch negativity, working memory in schizophrenia, cross-species differences in decision making and maternal immune activation and its relation to schizophrenia. Excellent posters were also presented on a variety of topics with Matthew Cologon, Jade Draper, Allanah Hessel, Candice McIntyre and Richard Waters winning the Best Poster Award for their poster on mate choice decisions. Following the presentations and poster sessions, students and staff repaired to the bar for drinks and nibbles, music and dancing, and fun had by all.

Special Colloquium Dr Tony Simon Tuesday 19 November

Next week Dr Tony Simon from the UC Davis MIND Institute is visiting Newcastle. I have asked Tony to give a talk for the School on Tuesday the 19^th of November at 11.30 in the Keats Room. I know it is late notice and not on our usual colloquium day but I hope that as many as possible can attend. Tony is an excellent speaker and does research that will be of interest to many in the School.

Dr. Tony J. Simon is a paediatric cognitive neuroscientist with a primary interest in clinical translational research. His studies focus on the cognitive, affective and neural basis of learning difficulties and psychopathologies that arise in genetic disorders. Dr. Simon’s primary methodology is the use of hypothesis-driven experimental tasks to characterize and measure cognitive and affective processing. His group’s current focus is on attention and aspects of executive function, such as cognitive control and working memory, as well as affective processing of fear and threat. The focus specifically is on how these “cold” and “hot” factors vary dynamically to impact cognitive processing and emotional regulation. The clinical translational research program incorporates standardized clinical measures of anxiety, adaptive functioning and psychopathologic symptomology as well stress biology to further understand the interaction of factors that contribute to each individual’s status as what Dr. Simon and his team refer to as “copers” or “strugglers”. To assess the neural basis of these factors the team acquires data on brain morphology, function and connectivity using T1-weighted structural images, diffusion weighted images, resting-state functional images and electrophysiological/event-related potential data.

All welcome for more information please contact Linda Campbell

Psychology Research Grants at the Hunter Medical Research Institute Awards

Juanita, Renate, Elise, Peter, Lauren and Frini represented Psychology at the Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) Awards last night – a bit like the HMRI Oscars! A number of our Expressions of Interests had led to invitations to submit full applications of very high quality projects. Of these, the two projects below were funded:


HMRI Dalara Foundation Project Grants
Mapping Networks in the Brain
Renate Thienel, Frini Karayanidis, Juanita Todd, Peter Stanwell, Mark Parsons, Chris Levi

This project will use Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy lmaging (MRSI) technology to measure concentrations of neurotransmitters chemicals crucial for communication in the brain and evaluate the relationship between brain function and brain structure in normal and stroke patients to improve the early detection of the disease. This project has implications for translation to clinical samples such as stroke, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, dyslexia, as well as cognitive remediation and brain stimulation approaches to functional recovery.


HMRI Male Depression Project Grant
Making use of Gaming Technologies to Help Young People Suffering from Depression and Binge Drinking.
Frances Kay-Lambkin, Peter Walla, Keith Nesbitt
Supported by: Lions Club of Toronto, Lioness Club of Toronto, The Estate of the Late Reginald Leslie Radford

Depression and binge drinking represent significant community problems, particularly for young people. Despite the high prevalence of these problems and the consequent need for treatment, rates of treatment access among young people remain the lowest of any age group. Internet-based treatments have the potential to meet this challenge. By combining startle reflex modulation with behavioural assessment, we will, for the first time, have a better understanding of the cognitive and affective response of young people to web-based psychological treatment for depression and binge drinking problems. The results of this study can facilitate the development of more engaging, and thus effective interventions for young people, and provide a useful methodological approach to evaluating these domains in future treatment studies

The quality of all the work was outstanding, and the non-winners did us proud as well. A list of all awards can be found here.

2013 Professional Psychology Day

Presented by Hunter New England (HNE) Health and the University of Newcastle's School of Psychology, the Professional Psychology Day at the University's Callaghan campus is the biggest meeting of local psychologists in the Hunter.

Psychologists from HNE Health, private practice and the University will come together on 15 November to attend workshops presented by representatives from allied health and medical disciplines, as well as listen to keynote speakers including Professor Judy Atkinson.

The thematic focus of this year's event is Aboriginal psychology and Aboriginal Health related issues. Professor Atkinson has focused her community and academic life working in the field of violence, trauma and healing. Her academic contributions to the understanding of trauma related issues stemming from the violence of colonisation and the healing/recovery of Indigenous peoples from such trauma has won her the Carrick Neville Bonner Award in 2006 for her curriculum development and innovative teaching practice.

The 2013 Professional Psychology Day showcases the great talent of psychologists in the local area, and demonstrates the varied areas of clinical practice. It aims to help improve psychologists' knowledge and skills to enable them to better assess and treat clients, with the subtheme 'promoting clinical excellence and culturally respective practices' covering essential areas of psychology practice.

The day also provides University of Newcastle psychology students with an opportunity to connect with the professionals at the forefront of psychology service provision.

For more information about the 2013 Professional Psychology Day, please contact:

Dr Stefania Paolini (School of Psychology, University of Newcastle)
Stefania.Paolini@newcastle.edu.au

Mary Watson (Senior Clinical Psychologist, Child Adolescent Mental Health Service)
mary.watson@hnehealth.nsw.gov.au

A/Prof. Tanya Hanstock (Senior Clinical Psychologist, Child & Family Health Service) Tanya.Hanstock@hnehealth.nsw.gov.au

PRESENTATION: How the brain processes surprise and prediction, by Dr. Marta Garrido (Queensland Brain Institute)

The School of Psychology is proudly hosting a talk by:

Dr. Marta I. Garrido

DECRA Research Fellow

Queensland Brain Institute

The University of Queensland

Title: Sensitivity to statistical structure in the human brain

Date: Thursday 24^th October 2013, 12-1pm in Keats Reading Room (AVLG17) (video streaming to Science Offices Meeting Room, E1.32 at Ourimbah). If you would like to meet with Dr. Garrido, please contact Dr. Juanita Todd (juanita.todd@newcastle.edu.au).

Abstract: Salient or oddball events in the environment may signal potential rewards or threats. The ability to detect these events is fundamental to survival and adaptive behaviour. In this talk, I will discuss behavioural and magnetoencephalographical (MEG) data that demonstrate the brain’s ability to learn about, and detect changes to, statistical structure in sounds sequences. In addition, I will discuss the usefulness of the oddball paradigm and model-based connectivity in demonstrating functional asymmetries in audio-spatial perception.

PRESENTATION: How objects are represented in the human brain, by Dr. Tom Carlson (Macquarie University)

The School of Psychology is proudly hosting a talk by Dr. Tom
Carlson (ARC Future Fellow, Department of Cognitive Science
Macquarie University)

WHEN: Thursday 10th October 12-1pm

WHERE: AVLG17, Aviation Building, Callaghan Campus
Also videoconferenced to Ourimbah E1.32.

TITLE: Object representations in the human brain: How they
emerge, and their connection to semantic knowledge and
perceptual decision-making

ABSTRACT: Our capacity to recognize visual objects is mediated
by multiple visual areas, in particular inferior temporal cortex
(ITC). Recent technological and methodological advancements have
afforded researchers the capacity to measure the complex
geometrical structure of brain representations. In this talk, I
will describe several studies that examine how the structure of
object representations emerges in the brain, and how this
structure relates to behavior. I will first describe experiments
that use brain decoding methods and magnetoencephalography (MEG)
to study the emergence of object category structure. Our findings
suggest that hierarchical category structure (e.g. human face is
a member of the superordinate category human) is a process of
accumulating evidence in which categories solidified at early
stages of processing inform more abstract category representations
that emerge later. I will then describe two studies that examine correspondences between the structure of object representations in
human ITC and human word usage patterns and decision-making
behavior. These studies show that the structure of object
representations in ITC correlate with human word usage patterns in
language; and ITC’s representational structure predicts reaction
times for object categorization. These studies collectively provide
an important link between the geometry of brain representations and
functional behavior.

PRESENTATION: Dr. Titia Benders (Nijmegen, the Netherlands). How do babies learn language?

The School of Psychology is proudly hosting a talk by Dr. Titia
Bender (Center for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen
The Netherlands)

Thursday, 3rd October, 2013, 12-1pm in AVLG17 (Aviation Building, Callaghan Campus).

How do babies learn language from the way we talk to them?

Babies learn about their native language by listening
to the speech that surrounds them. To understand how language-
learning happens in this situation, we must know: 1) what kind of
speech babies are confronted with and 2) what babies learn from
this.

Babies hear a special type of speech, because most adults speak
differently to babies. It has been proposed that parents speak
to babies in a special register to express their positive affect
and to teach them the language. I will show more fine-grained
analyses of infant-directed speech, which reveal that all parents
do is express positive affect when they speak to their baby. I
will argue that earlier results that were interpreted as language
teaching, were actually happy speech in disguise.

Even though parents do not actively teach their baby language,
babies manage to learn language from what they hear. Listening
experiments provide evidence what babies learn about the language,
but cannot reveal how they learn it. I will illustrate that the
combination of analyses of language input, listening experiments
with babies, and computational modeling can bring us a long way
in answering the question of how babies use the speech that
surrounds them to learn their native language.