Research Presentation by Visiting Speaker Dr Jenna Condie: “Where is Psychology in the Posthuman City?”

The School of Psychology’s Social and Organisational Psychology Research Group invites you to a research presentation by visiting speaker Dr Jenna Condie titled: “Where is Psychology in the Posthuman City?”

When: 12.00pm – 1.00pm on Tuesday 30th May

Where: The Keats Reading Room, Psychology/Aviation Building (AVLG17), with video link to the Science Offices at Ourimbah.

Abstract
Psychology contributes much to our understandings of city life, from urban stress and restorative spaces, to identities of place and sense of belonging. As my research explores the intersections of people, digital technologies, and cities, I am engaging with posthumanist and new materialist philosophies to replace dominant binary constructs—the human/non-human, body/machine, online/offline, self/other, people/places, digital/material—that rei
nforce boundaries between people, cities and technology. To consider the potentials of a ‘posthumanist psychology’, I draw from my research on humans as ‘sensors’ for ‘smart’ cities, connective resistance to urban redevelopment, and the social encounters reworked by location-aware smartphone apps. What are we ‘becoming’ (Barad, 2003) in the posthuman city and what is the place of psychology?

Biography
Dr Jenna Condie is a Lecturer in Digital Research and Online Social Analysis in the School of Social Sciences and Psychology at Western Sydney University. Her research focuses on the relationships between people and place in the digital world. Jenna champions the use of social media and digital technologies to encourage voice, participation, and dialogue within academic and community contexts.

All are welcome. We look forward to seeing you there.

New Research Project Aims to Reduce Risk-Taking Among Australian Coal Miners

A multidisciplinary research group has recently been awarded a major research grant to investigate the psychological causes of risk-taking among Australian coal miners. The research project will survey around 1,000 coal miners in both underground and open-cut coal mines in New South Wales and Queensland. The research has two main aims: (1) to identify the key factors that cause dangerous risk-taking in Australian coal mines, and (2) to design and test a practical intervention to reduce this risk-taking.

The three-year research project is funded by a grant of over $300,000 from the Australian Coal Association’s Research Program, and it follows close consultation with key stakeholders in the industry.

The multidiscliplinary research team is based at the University of Newcastle, and includes Dr Mark Rubin from the School of Psychology, Dr Anna Giacomini from the School of Engineering, and Prof Brian Kelly from the School of Medicine and Public Health. The researchers work together within the Centre for Resources Health and Safety, which is part of the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources.

Dr Rubin explained that “the originality and novelty of the proposed research project is that it will be the first to undertake a focussed investigation of the psychological causes of dangerous risk-taking behaviour in the Australian coal mining industry.

For further information about the project, please contact Dr Rubin at Mark.Rubin@newcastle.edu.au

JUST PUBLISHED: Does Playing Action Video Games Really Improve Your Information Processing?

Over the last decade, a number of studies have been published that suggest that playing action video games improves performance on sensory, perceptual, and attentional tasks. For instance, Green, Pouget, and Bavelier (2010) found that playing action video games led to faster information processing, reduced response caution, and no difference in motor responding. These and related findings are sufficiently hot right now that they often make it to popular science outlets like Ted talks (for example, see Daphne Bavelier’s Ted talk).

Because perceptual learning is generally thought to be highly context-specific, this transfer from gaming is surprising and warrants corroborative evidence from a large-scale training study. We (van Ravenzwaaij, Boekel, Forstmann, Ratcliff, & Wagenmakers, 2014) conducted two experiments in which participants that were self-reported non-gamers practiced either an action video game or a cognitive game in five separate, supervised sessions. Prior to each session and following the last session, participants performed a perceptual discrimination task. In the second experiment, we included a third condition in which no video games were played at all.

We analysed the behavioural data and found, in contrast to earlier findings, that action gamers, cognitive gamers, and non-gamers all improved as a result of practice, but that, importantly, there was no differential benefit for the group of participants that had played the action game. A diffusion model decomposition of the data indicated that the practice effect observed in all conditions was due to faster information processing.

We concluded that, in contrast to earlier reports, playing action video games does not improve the speed of information processing in simple perceptual tasks.

For more details, see the following journal article, available on the first author’s website:

van Ravenzwaaij, D., Boekel, W., Forstmann, B. U., Ratcliff, R., & Wagenmakers, E. J. (2014). Action video games do not improve the speed of information processing in simple perceptual tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143 (5), 1794-805 PMID: 24933517

Or read the online APA PeePs blogpost.

JUST PUBLISHED: First-Impression Bias Distorts the Relevance of Sound

Brains are wired to detect the odd one out!

While we are busily engaged in goal-directed activity, our focus of attention is protected from interruption by automatic processes that filter the potential relevance of information around us. The brain’s proficiency as an inferential device is central to this process. By anticipating the likely next-state of the world, the brain minimises resources engaged in processing events that match expectations making us more sensitive to sudden changes that deviate from predictions. For example, you may have noticed this in how readily you tune out consistent noise like the hum of an air conditioner. However, if this noise changes in some way (sounds louder or irregular) your attention may again be drawn to reconsider the relevance and whether action is required.

At the University of Newcastle's Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, Dr Juanita Todd and colleagues have been studying this process by measuring brain responses to deviations from patterned acoustic input. The brain constantly maps acoustic regularities (even during sleep) to anticipate the most likely properties of sound. Deviations from patterning can capture attention if they elicit sufficiently large responses (e.g., when a deviation is very unlikely). Our studies have centred on understanding the factors that influence deviant response amplitude. Much to our surprise, this relevance-filtering mechanism is subject to a “first-impression” bias. Automatic filters of sound relevance appear to assign potential information value to an unattended sound based on whether it was initially encountered as common and predictable (lower value) or rare an unpredictable (higher value). This first-impression changes the way actual sound probabilities affect deviant response amplitude. We can alter the bias by first asking participants to perform a task with the sounds that they later hear in the unattended sound sequence but curiously we cannot actually abolish the bias as it is remarkably durable.

This research challenges existing models that assume the filter reflects a “low level” system slave to statistical properties of the sound sequences encountered. Instead our research reveals that automated processes distort our internal representation of the environment. We are presently conducting a suite of studies to better understand why and how this bias impacts attention and learning, in particular why first-impressions are given so much weight in our expectations about the world.

For more information about this research, please see the following open-access journal article:

Todd, J., Heathcote, A., Whitson, L. R., Mullens, D., Provost, A., & Winkler, I. (2014). Mismatch negativity (MMN) to pitch change is susceptible to order-dependent bias. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 8 PMID: 25009462

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: Sexuality and Suicide - Call for a More Nuanced Approach

The evidence that sexual minorities (e.g., lesbians, gay males, bisexuals, and those questioning their sexuality: LGBQ) are at increased risk of suicide is fairly robust. This study (anonymous, online survey, N = 1,016), as several others, found LGBQ participants were more likely to meet standardized assessment criteria for suicide-risk.

Knowing which groups are at increased risk of suicide provides great help for outreach, treatment and prevention. Unfortunately, some may view at-risk groups in a tick box manner, recognizing the risk but not looking for nuances in risk behaviors. This study was the first to methodically compare suicide-risk heterosexuals with suicide-risk LGBQ.

Matched pairs analyses compared suicide-risk LGBQ and suicide-risk heterosexuals (n = 79; aged 18 – 76) on suicidal behaviors (i.e., ideation, attempts, disclosure of suicidal intent, and prediction of future suicide). As shown in previous research, LGBQ reported greater likelihood to disclose their suicidal intent. LGBQ also reported more suicide attempts and were more likely to predict future attempts. However, the two groups showed no statistically significant differences on suicidal ideation. Ideation was assessed through current wish to die, past year ideation, and through engagement in an internal debate on whether to live or die (lifetime).

This study demonstrated the necessity of assessing suicide risk beyond thoughts, and looking at a more complete scenario of risk behaviors. This study showed that looking beyond the tick box label of “high risk” can yield important and interesting details of how a group can be at increased risk.


For more information, please see the following journal article:

Harris, K. (2013). Sexuality and Suicidality: Matched-Pairs Analyses Reveal Unique Characteristics in Non-Heterosexual Suicidal Behaviors Archives of Sexual Behavior DOI: 10.1007/s10508-013-0112-2

or email Keith.Harris@newcastle.edu.au 

JUST PUBLISHED: Treating Anxiety by Modifying Negative Cognitive Biases

Dr Sirous Mobini and colleagues have recently published a integrative review of the literature investigating the treatment of anxiety using cognitive bias modification.

Cognitive theories of social anxiety indicate that negative biases in thinking play a key role in causing and maintaining social anxiety. On the basis of these cognitive theories, research has shown that individuals with social anxiety interpret ambiguous social situations in a negative (or less passive) manner.

Cognitive Bias Modification for interpretative biases (CBM-I) was developed from this experimental research to reduce these negative interpretative biases in social anxiety. CBM-I intervention is entirely delivered by computer and there is no contact with a clinician. Over several sessions participants are trained to develop positive interpretations of ambiguous social scenarios. Participants read a series of ambiguous social scenarios presented on the computer screen which are ultimately resolved positively via completion of incomplete words (e.g. p--as-nt). All passages are presented in four lines individually and the participants’ task is to complete the word fragment (last word in the passage) after reading the passage by keying the first missing letter (in this example the letter ‘l’ for pleasant.

The results of the literature review have shown that this CBM-I positive training not only reduces negative interpretations of ambiguous social situations but also reduces social anxiety symptoms in individuals with social anxiety. However, the long-term positive effects of CBM-I need to be investigated with patients with social anxiety disorder.

For more information, please see the following journal article:

Mobini, S., Reynolds, S., & Mackintosh, B. (2012). Clinical Implications of Cognitive Bias Modification for Interpretative Biases in Social Anxiety: An Integrative Literature Review Cognitive Therapy and Research, 37 (1), 173-182 DOI: 10.1007/s10608-012-9445-8

or e-mail Dr Mobini at Sirous.Mobini@newcastle.edu.au

Good News

The first three months of the year have flown by. Lots of exciting things have been happening in the School both research wise and for students.
Here is an overview of some of the achievements so far.

Student News

Rhiannon Hampton, Erin Campbell, Mathew Marchant, Owen Lello and Julia Dray

Graduation was held on 12 April and saw more than 100 graduates attend the ceremony for the School of Psychology program. The following students were winners of school prizes or university or faculty medals.

Rhiannon Hampton received the University medal, a faculty medal and the APS Prize for best performance in 4th year

Faculty medallists were Erin Campbell, Jonathon Love, Kristen McCarter, Kalyce Howard, Sarah McPhail, Anna Tuyl.

School prizewinners were
The Invinskis Prize for 3rd year - Mathew Marchant
The J A Keats Prize for Quantitative or Cognitive Psychology thesis in 4th year  - Julia Dray
The W H Ward Prize –thesis in Applied Psychology – Undergraduate winner Jane Goodwin and Postgraduate winner – Michelle Condon
The Basic Science Prize for a Pure Science thesis – Erin Campbell
The Ros Gribble Prize in Clinical Psychology – Owen Lello

Jane Wheatley has now completed her Professional Doctorates in Clinical and Health Psychology, and Joanne Wirrell has completed her Professional Doctorate in Clinical Pscychology

Elise Mansfield and Guy Hawkins have submitted their PhD thesis for examination and Rickie-Leigh Elliot has submitted her thesis for the Doctor of Clinical Psychology.

Congratulations everyone!

Staff News
 Our academics to have been busy with numerous publication and other achievements. These include:

Media and Community 
Keith Harris gave the opening talk to start off the very successful Seascape & Beyond Art Exhibition Fundraiser at Merewether Surf Life Saving Club. 

Write-up of high impact journal article with Stefania Paolini and Mark Rubin on the Society for Personality and Social Psychology website: PSP Connections. (10/03/13). Do bad interracial interactions shape our attitudes more than good interracial interactions? Retrieved from http://spsptalks.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/do-bad-interracial-interactions-shape-our-attitudes-more-than-good-interracial-interactions/

Port Waratah Coal Services Grant
Recipient - Dr Sally McFadden. Sceral and Retinal Mechanisms Underlying Regional Changes in Myopia.
This research will determine how important retinal signals and sclera strength are in causing myopia and develop new treatments for myopia.

International Profile
Stefania Paolini has been nominated to be chair of the internationalization committee of the (American-led) Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (co-chair with Dr D. Livert, Penn State University) for the period 2013-2015. SPSSI is an association of approximately 3,000 psychologists, allied scientists, and others, who are interested in the application of research on the psychological aspects of important social issues to public policy solutions.

Lauren Harms, Postdoctoral Fellow, has been awarded an Australia Israel Research Exchange Neuroscience Fellowship to spend time in Professor Ina Weiner's lab in the School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University.  Prof Weiner is a world authority on animal models of psychopathology, and in particular neurodevelopmental models of schizophrenia, based on a well known risk factor, namely, maternal infection.  Lauren is working on similar models in Deb Hodgson's animal lab and hopes to learn about Prof Weiner's methods for assessing latent inhibition in rodents - latent inhibition is impaired in schizophrenia.

Refereed Journal Articles
Published Articles 
Walmsley, B. & McCormack, L. (2013). The dance of communication: Retaining family membership despite severe non-speech dementia. Dementia. Published online before print March 20, 2013, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1471301213480359

McCormack, L. & Sly, R. (2013). Distress and Growth: The subjective ‘lived’ experiences of being the child of a Vietnam veteran. Traumatology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1534765613481855

McCormack, L. & Joseph, S. (2012). Psychological distress and growth in humanitarian aid personnel: Making meaning of occupational exposure to war and genocide.  Community, Work and Family, 1-17.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2012.735478

Sinderberry, B., Brown, S.D., Hammond, P., Stevens, A.F., Schall, U., Murphy, D.G., Murphy, K.C. & Campbell, L. (2013) Subtypes in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome associated with behaviour and neurofacial morphology. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(1), 116-125. 

Turner, B., Forstmann, B., Wagenmakers, E.-J., Brown, S.D., Sederberg, S. & Steyvers, M. (2013) A Bayesian Framework for Simultaneously Modeling Neural and Behavioral Data. Neuroimage 

Mobini, S., Mackintosh, B., & Reynolds, S. (2013). Clinical Implications of Interpretation Bias in Social Anxiety: An integrative literature review. Cognitive  Therapy and Research. 37, 173-182.

Matthews, N., Todd, J., Mannion, D., Finnigan, S., Catts, S., & Michie, P.T. (in press) Impaired processing of binaural temporal cues to auditory scene analysis in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2013.02.013)

 Guez D. (2013). A common pesticide decreases foraging success and survival in honey bees: questioning the ecological relevance. Frontiers in Physiology, 4:37. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2013.00037

In Press Articles 
Hawkins, G. E., Rae, B., Nesbitt, K. V., & Brown, S. D. (in press) Game-like features might not improve data. Behavior Research Methods 

Trueblood, J., Brown, S.D., Heathcote, A. & Busemeyer, J. (in press) Not just for consumers: Context effects are fundamental to decision-making. Psychological Science 

Matzke, D., Dolan, C.V., Logan, G.D., Brown, S.D., & Wagenmakers, E.-J. (in press) Bayesian parametric estimation of stop-signal reaction time distributions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Turner, B., Sederberg, P., Brown, S.D., & Steyvers, M. (in press) A note on efficiently sampling from distributions with correlated dimensions. Psychological Methods 

Harris, K. M., McLean, J. P., & Sheffield, J. (in press). Suicidal and online: How do online behaviors inform us of this high-risk population? Death Studies.

Harris, K. M. (in press). Sexuality and suicidality: Matched-pairs analyses reveal unique characteristics in non-heterosexual suicidal behaviors. Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Rubin, M. (in press, accepted 06/02/13). “It wasn’t my idea to come here!”: Ownership of the idea to immigrate as a function of gender, age, and culture. International Journal of Intercultural Relations. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2013.02.001 [Journal ranked in top third of sociology journals]

Wolfenden L, McKeough  A, Bowman J, Paolini S, Francis L, Wye P, & Puhl, R. (2013, accepted 18/04/13). An experimental investigation of parents and their children’s social interaction intentions toward obese children. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health [2-yrIF 1.28, ranked 66/115 (ISI middle tier) among pediatrics journals]

Sharip, S, Michie, P, Schall, U, Drysdale, K, Case, V, Sanakarayan, A, Sidi, H, Das, S. Generalization of cognitive training in an Australian sample of schizophrenia patients. Comprehensive Psychiatry (accepted 19 March, 2013).  

Cooper, RJ., Atkinson, RJ., Clark, RA, Michie, PT. Event-related potentials reveal modelling of auditory repetition in the brain.  International Journal of Psychophysiology (accepted 11 Feb, 2013)

Prowse, E., Bore, M., & Dyer, S. (In Press). Eating Disorder Symptomatology and Mindfulness: are they related and what is their influence on Body Image, Identity, Personality and Quality of Life? Clinical Psychologist.
Book Chapters  
McCormack, L. (2012).  Humanitarian Missions. Encyclopedia of Trauma: An Interdisciplinary Guide, SAGE, New York 20-904 (First Edition/Ed: Charles Figley). 

McCormack, L. (2012).  Genocide. Encyclopedia of Trauma: An Interdisciplinary Guide, SAGE, New York 20-904 (First Edition/Ed: Charles Figley).

McCormack, L. (2012).  Governments and NGOs. Encyclopedia of Trauma: An Interdisciplinary Guide, SAGE, New York 20-904 (First Edition/Ed: Charles Figley).

McCormack, L. (2012).  Traumatized Entertainers. Encyclopedia of Trauma: An Interdisciplinary Guide, SAGE, New York 20-904 (First Edition/Ed: Charles Figley).

Broyd, SJ, Greenwood, L-M, Croft, RJ, Dalecki, A, Todd, J, Michie, PT, Johnstone, SJ and Solowij, N.  Chronic effects of cannabis on sensory gating. International Journal of Psychophysiology (accepted 10 April, 2013)

Spotlight on Research: What's in (Half) a Face?

In the School of Psychology's new Spotlight on Research section, we focus on recent research conducted by Dr Darren Burke at our Ourimbah campus (pictured partly and wholly below!): 

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When we recognise someone, we integrate information from across their face into a perceptual whole, and do so using a specialised brain region. Recognising other kinds of objects does not engage such specific brain areas, and is achieved in a much more parts-based way.

In a recent review of the literature, we (Burke & Sulikowski, 2013) investigated how this face-specific mode of perception may have evolved by examining the evidence for face-based holistic processing in other species. A surprisingly wide variety of other animals can recognise each other from their “face”, but for most of these there is either evidence that they don’t do this “holistically” (dogs are an example) or insufficient evidence to claim that they do (typically because the experiments are poorly designed).

There is good evidence that some species of monkey are as affected by turning the face upside down as humans are (which is one index of holistic processing), and one species of monkey (Rhesus macaques) also show evidence of the “composite effect”. The composite effect refers to the fact that people find it difficult to recognise the top half of a face if it is shown lined up with the bottom half of a different face, because we can’t help integrating the two halves into a new whole. People have trouble recognising other primate faces when they are upside down, but only show the composite effect for human faces.

We also suggested that the original evolutionary origin of special holistic face processing might not be to recognise who’s who. There are actually lots of other sources of evolutionary important information in faces that require holistic integration. For example, detecting symmetry, and masculinity/femininity is important for mate-choice decisions, and subtle variations in facial configurations underpin many non-verbal communicative signals.

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

Burke, D., & Sulikowski, D. (2013). The Evolution of Holistic Processing of Faces Frontiers in Psychology, 4 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00011

or contact Dr Darren Burke at Darren.Burke@newcastle.edu.au