Psychology Research Project Supervisors

My research is concerned with links between brain activity and our conscious sensory experiences. If you join my group, you will become a member of a dynamic team of researchers, with several fellow students and a postdoctoral research fellow, in addition to myself and collaborative researchers here at UQ and overseas. You will have an opportunity to learn about brain imagining (electroencephalography - EEG), computational modelling and psychophysical experiments - to answer questions about our conscious experiences. I am particularly keen to hear from students who are interested in a career in sensory neuroscience research.

This year the following projects are available in my lab.

1) Sensory Predictions and Conscious Perception. Once people become familiar with a repeated sequence, exposure to the first event of that sequence can cause the human brain to have responses to each of the anticipated train of events, regardless of whether those events are actually presented. In this project we will determine if these predictive responses are sufficient to make people think they have experienced an anticipated event, or if these predictive responses in the brain simply make people more sensitive to predicted events if they do occur.

2) The specious moment. I have previously shown that your sense of time can be distorted for events that occur within small, local regions of your visual field. This refuted a long-held notion that our sense of time relies on a single internal clock. In this project, we will see if we can similarly change the smallest moment of time you can detect in different regions of the visual field. Is there a standard smallest moment of time you can distinguish, or can you distinguish between different magnitudes of duration in different regions of your visual field?

3) Time distortions and confidence. Rare, surprising events can seem to last longer than frequent repeated events. People can also be more sensitive to the details of content embedded in surprising events. In this project, we will ask if changes in time perception, and sensitivity to the content of surprising events, are coupled with changes in the feelings of confidence that people have about their judgments of surprising events.

For further details, consult my home page. If you are contemplating an honours project on one of these, or a related topic, feel free to contact me via email or in person.

Perception - Lab Homepage

I am a paediatric neurologist and researcher investigating outcomes after brain injury. I work closely with neuropsychologists in the Queensland Paediatric Rehabilitation Service (QPRS).

Twenty percent of children sustain a traumatic brain injury (TBI). I am interested in recovery after TBI and exploring new treatments such as non-invasive brain stimulation to improve outcomes. This year students will explore how brain connectivity (assessed using resting-state and task-based functional near-infrared spectroscopy, fNIRS) relates to outcome after childhood brain injury. You will get opportunities to participate in research using non-invasive brain stimulation and collect neuropsychological outcomes (i.e. using questionnaires, computerized cognitive tasks, etc) in our current studies involving brain stimulation.

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) uses the hemodynamic response to neuronal activity due to neurovascular coupling such that neuronal activity causes an increase in oxygen and glucose consumption which then leads to an increase in cerebral blood flow. In this way it can reveal deficits in regional function and coordinated activity. Using fNIRS and fMRI, you will examine functional connectivity and its relationship to outcome following acquired brain injury in children and in healthy developing children.

I am a clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist by profession. I am currently the psychology conjoint clinical research fellow at the Surgical, Treatment and Rehabilitation Services (STARS) hospital and the University of Queensland. I am a psychologist and researcher primarily based at STARS hospital. I work closely with medical, nursing, and allied health in both research and practice, and in my UQ role I am a part of the psychology postgraduate clinical teaching team. My broad areas of interests both clinically and in research are in brain injury rehabilitation, use of technology in rehabilitation, and the psychology role within the rehabilitation team.

We have several research projects currently running at the hospital. We currently have a project available for an honours student on the use of biofeedback (heart rate variability) for stress management in a rehabilitation setting. This would involve collaboration with psychologists (both clinical and neuropsychologists) who will be using this this technology with patients at STARS hospital.

Welcome to Honours!

My area of expertise is within the areas of cognitive control and attention and eye movements. If you're looking for an Honours Supervisor within this area and would like to talk to me, please contact me: s.becker@psy.uq.edu.au

My research is mainly in the area of Cognitive Science and revolves around attention and perception; specifically around the question: What are the factors that guide visual attention and eye movements? Below you'll find some project outlines that are good examples of the kind of projects that I’m offering this year.

Are items processed in a context-dependent manner?

Current theories of visual attention (Feature Integration Theory; Guided Search 2.0; Optimal Tuning) assume that attention is biased to specific feature values in visual search. For instance, when looking for an orange, we would tune attention to the specific colour (orange) and shape (round) to find it faster. However, my own research shows that attention is often tuned in a context-dependent manner to specific features. That is: When the context contains many yellow items, attention will be tuned to all redder items or the reddest item rather than orange. Conversely, when the context contains many red items, attention is tuned to the yellowest items. The corresponding account has been labelled the Relational Account (Becker, 2010), and we have been able to show that it allows more accurate predictions than other accounts. There are still many open questions that could be explored in an Honours project, as for example:

(1) What are the limitations of relational tuning? Does it only occur within category boundaries as imposed by language (e.g., only within the red / yellow categories), or does it operate across category boundaries (e.g., bleeding into green in search for red/yellow)?

(2) What happens if we render relational search impossible and force tuning attention to specific feature values? Is the resulting feature-specific search slower, or more vulnerable to distraction?

(3) Previous research has shown that we can suppress or inhibit visually salient items, but it’s not that clear what feature(s) actually get inhibited. Is this inhibition also context-dependent and broad, or does it only apply to the specific feature of the salient distractor?

(4) Previous research has shown that information about a search target (e.g., orange and round) is stored in Visual Short-Term memory (VSTM). When does this ‘target template’ change to a context-dependent search strategy? Does this require learning, or can it be achieved with the first glance at a visual scene?

(5) Does relational search also operate in displays with multiple different items and distractors that mimic natural environments?

If you'd like to gain an overview of the central topics of interest, you can read these two papers (downloadable from www.sibecker.com):

Becker, S.I. (2014). Guidance of attention by feature relationships: The end of the road for feature map theories? In Horsley, M., Eliot, M., Riley, R., and Knight, B. (Eds.) Current Trends in Eye Tracking Research. Springer (pp. 37-49).

Becker, S.I. (2013). Why you cannot map attention. A relational theory of attention and eye movements. Australian Psychologist, 48, 389-398.

My work revolves around understanding worker wellbeing, health, and behaviour. I am particularly interested in the impact of the psychosocial work environment (e.g., the culture and values of the organisation, manager support, job demands) on sedentary behaviour.

In 2023, I have the following honours project:

Psychosocial work environments are known to have impacts on physical and mental health outcomes, such as heart disease and burnout. Less is known about how psychosocial work environments impact on behaviours such as sedentary behaviour and physical activity during work hours.

Relationships between the psychosocial work environment and occupational sedentary behaviour and physical activity are likely to be complex and variable. The objective of this project will be to evaluate how fluctuating psychosocial work environment factors (e.g., job demands) relate to occupational sedentary behaviour and physical activity using an ecological momentary assessment study.

Participants will wear a Move 4 monitor on their thigh for five workdays during work hours. Participants will complete a short survey at multiple intervals through the workday about their psychosocial work environment via an app. App prompts will be a mixture of time-based (e.g., midday) and activity-based (e.g., after 30 minutes of prolonged sitting). Survey measures will be brief, be based on existing surveys (such as the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire) and will refer to the previous time period – e.g., ‘Did your work this morning require you to work very fast?’.

Please email me if you would like to know more about the project.

I am an organisational and social psychologist with projects ranging from reasoning and bias to impression formation and political decision making. See my profile here. 

This semester I will conduct studies in two areas. 
1) People who reason wisely show less bias and more prosocial behaviour in difficult challenges like conflicts, making them great to have around and be around. But reasoning wisely takes effort, so if we want to prescribe training or advice to employees and leaders on how they can reason more wisely we first need to understand whether and how their efforts will be received by others. For example, if leaders who take time to reason wisely about their decisions are actually seen as weak, incompetent, or lacking confidence, then it might actually undermine their ability to influence. This could be even more vicarious for women leaders, who may already have a disadvantage or resistance to their leadership (e.g., from male followers). This project will investigate how wise reasoning is perceived at work, and how it relates to positive and negative outcomes such as character attributions (e.g., intelligence, competence) and trust and loyalty to leaders. 

2) Physical touch is one of the most important aspects of human development and feeling connection with other people, but at work physical touch is a grey zone at least and verboten more generally--mainly to prevent sexual harassment and assault. But what is the value of physical touch at work? At work, people experience anxiety and trauma, frustration and disappointment, precisely the experiences that could benefit from physical touch (e.g., a hug from a consoling co-worker), but there is no research on this topic--probably because of the verboten nature of physical touch at work. This project will examine people's experiences of physical touch at work, both positive and negative, and explore how those experiences made employees feel about their sense of support and belonging at work, as well as their job satisfaction and loyalty to the organisation. 

The Child and Youth Mental Health group focuses on furthering our knowledge on the role of genetic factors in the development and persistence of childhood psychiatric disorders and the association with other childhood and adult traits. We use genetically-informative datasets from Australia and overseas as part of several consortia to investigate the role of genetic variation in child and adolescent psychopathology and behavioural problems.

Many psychiatric disorders begin with onset of symptoms during childhood with more than 50% having age at onset before age 14. For some children, problem behaviours or psychiatric symptoms persist into adulthood, sometimes progressing into severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, while for others, symptoms resolve after a period of time. Changes in behaviour throughout childhood and adolescence are influenced by complex interplay between genetic and environmental risk factors.

Recent progress in the field of psychiatric genetics have allowed identification of genetic variants associated with mental health problems and the development of polygenic risk scores that index an individual's liability to specific mental health problems. These scores can be used in longitudinal datasets to identify precursors of mental health problems in children and adolescents. 

To that end, there are a number of potential studies that could be conducted by students in the group for an Honours project. 

• Investigating genetic overlap between childhood traits and between childhood traits and adult psychiatric disorders:

For example, investigating the genetic correlation between mental disorders and traits associated with mental disorders, e.g., BMI, educational attainment, loneliness, neuroticism, wellbeing, insomnia, suicide)

• Improving risk prediction to identify individuals at greater risk for poorer outcomes.

Polygenic risk scores that measure an individual’s genetic risk for a disorder are commonly used in research. Our group seeks to combine polygenic risk scores with environmental variables to assess whether we can identify those most at risk for poorer outcomes.

• Investigating the genetics of caffeine-induced insomnia and impacts upon mental health

Caffeine is the most widely used psychoactive substance in the world. One of the most commonly reported side-effects of caffeine consumption is difficulties with sleep. In this study, we will investigate genetic effects on caffeine-induced insomnia and investigate associations between caffeine consumption and measures of wellbeing throughout development.

My research focuses on the understanding and treatment of anxiety. I am currently examining causal and maintaining factors for anxiety disorders in children and adults. I am particularly interested in how the psychological construct Intolerance of Uncertainty predicts anxiety. I am also interested in the interpretive bias towards threat in anxiety (thinking bad things will happen).

Drug and alcohol use

Suicide-related behaviours

Chronic pain

Prescription opioid use

Cannabis

I am interested in how and why we move the way we do. The human body is a complex mechanical system, and the challenge faced by the central nervous system in controlling desired movements is substantial. But we also live in a world full of choice. How do we decide what type of movement to make? How do we select movement characteristics - such as speed, which limb to use, and the trajectory of our joints – when many potential options will achieve our task goal?

I conduct human behavioural (using virtual reality systems and robotically modified mechanical environments), computational and neurophysiological (EEG, non-invasive brain stimulation, electromyography, etc) work to study the control of movement. I have honours projects available on how perturbation of sensory feedback about movement leads to brain adaptation, how people balance the effort of actions with their prospective reward to make decisions about whether to act - in order to better understand apathy in neurological conditions, and on the similarities in neural control systems for fast limb and eye movements (reaches vs saccades).

I work in a friendly, collaborative lab where multiple staff and students are doing overlapping types of work. Please feel free to contact me to get a feel for the potential projects, and/or to arrange a tour of our labs.

My research explores the links between adverse childhood experiences, parenting, and wellbeing, across the life course and across generations.  It aims to identify ways we can support families who are affected by historic or current adversities (e.g., trauma, social disadvantage, relationship conflict, child maltreatment), through evidence-based policy and practice.  Towards this aim, I use quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey datasets, and contribute to trials of parenting interventions.  In 2023 I am looking to answer questions such as:

1. Are parents who experienced adversity during their childhood more likely to experience adversity during their adulthood; and does this influence their children's wellbeing?  

2. How can we create the most effective training for practitioners seeking to provide an evidence-based parenting program?

PhD Candidate researching the psychology of charitable giving, particularly how identity and perceived norms inform individuals’ decisions about whom to help and the kind of help they are willing to offer through charitable organisations.

More broadly, I’m interested in the application of psychological knowledge to social issues, with the goal of engaging communities in positive social change and promoting social justice.

The Chuang group at the Queensland Brain Institute focuses on understanding the functional connectome of the brain. The brain connectome describes how neurons are wired and interact. It is a critical component for linking behaviour with cellular and molecular changes. Many neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders show deficits in specific brain networks, suggesting that disease-specific connectome may underlie a disease progression. The group is developing functional and molecular imaging techniques, particularly combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and optical tools such as optogenetic and calcium recording, to understand system-level functional connectivity that underlies behaviour and how diseases lead to impairment of the brain network. As the functional networks detected by fMRI is highly translatable between humans and rodents, the identification of disease-specific patterns of brain activity and connectivity would be used as biomarkers to improve the characterisation of diseases and their progress. The Chuang group aims to facilitate early and specific diagnosis, optimise treatment and develop drug therapeutics via this translational research. 

The Chuang group have established fMRI in rodent models to map large-scale synchronous networks, aka the resting-state network, in vivo. This ongoing synchronous network activity reorganised following memory tasks. Using network analyses, brain regions highly connected to various network modules could be identified as a hub. By targeted inhibition of these key network hubs after learning, the memory recall was hampered. This indicates that brain-wide large-scale network is involved in memory formation and network hub identified by fMRI may be used to modulate behavioural performance.

To further understand the behaviour-brain connectivity, the group is developing new behavioural paradigm to understand how large-scale networks are invoked and interact during a task.

The student will:

1. gain knowledge and hands-on experience with neuroanatomy, advanced functional neuroimaging and data analysis techniques;
2. participate in animal fMRI experiments;
3. conduct data analysis, generate reports and present the results;
4. conduct literature review;
5. contribute to manuscript preparation for journal publication.

Two honours projects are available to be co-supervised by Dr Laetitia Coles and Dr Sally Staton. Dr Coles and Dr Staton are research fellows at the Queensland Brain Institute. They work in multi-disciplinary team of developmental scientists, undertaking large scale longitudinal and natural-experimental studies with embedded studies to understand the mechanisms that enable or limit children's life chances. Dr Coles has a particular interest in the role of families and work on children’s lives. Dr Staton is a Development Psychologist whose work focuses on child sleep development and the impacts of care environments on children’s health and developmental outcomes. Honours projects will be embedded within an ARC-funded study (the Sleep Transitions and Regularity study (STARs): Sleep Transitions and Regularity Study (STARs) - Queensland Brain Institute - University of Queensland (uq.edu.au)) and will specifically focus on questions around the relationship between family life patterns and child and parent sleep.

My broad area of research expertise for honours thesis supervision is in the area of Clinical Psychology, and more specifically, in the area of pain (acute and chronic) assessment and management. I am interested in a cognitive-behavioural conceptualisation, with also a focus on the role of mindfulness and acceptance in the experience as well as management of pain.

Identification of genetic and environmental risk factors for mental health disorders

Supervisor: Prof. Eske Derks, group leader of the Translational Neurogenomics Group at QIMR Berghofer and provisional psychologist

• https://www.qimrberghofer.edu.au/our-research/mental-health-and-neuroscience/translational-neurogenomics/

Background: Mental health disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety, substance use) are the leading cause of global disease burden in the young adult population. The Translational Neurogenomics Group aims to identify genetic risk factors for a range of mental health and substance use disorders, and investigate the interplay between genetic and environmental risk factors.

What do we offer: A position in a dynamic research environment and the opportunity to conduct high-quality studies and be part of a successful research team. QIMR Berghofer is a world leader in the field of psychiatric genetics. In joining our lab you will get access to the unparalleled UK Biobank, among other large-scaled datasets through (inter)national collaborations.

UK Biobank is a major national and international health resource with the aim of improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of serious and life-threatening illnesses. UK Biobank recruited 500,000 people that have since been assessed on thousands of different measures. Extensive information on mental health has been collected in a subset of 150,000 individuals.

Potential projects: We have expertise spanning multiple disciplines, including biology, genetics, statistics, psychology and psychiatry, hence we can offer a wide range of honours projects that are tailored to your interests. Some example projects:

1. Substance use and substance use disorders (SUDs) are explained by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Exposure to traumatic experiences, particularly in childhood, has been linked with both substance abuse and dependence. Why do some people who have been exposed to trauma develop SUDs and others do not? Is this link stronger in people with a genetic predisposition to SUDs? This project will investigate the interaction between genetic liability to substance use and traumatic experiences in the UK Biobank.
2. A network approach to psychopathology is an alternative way of conceptualising mental illness. A disorder is conceptualised as a system of interacting relationships between symptoms, rather than the set of symptoms resulting from a single latent factor (the disorder). This project will conduct a network analysis of depression using symptom-level data from the UK Biobank. Networks will be estimated for groups with a high vs. low genetic predisposition for depression in order to determine whether genetic risk is associated with differences in psychopathological network structure

Student profile: We are seeking a highly motivated student with a strong interest in statistics and quantitative studies. If you are interested in conducting your honours thesis with us, please contact me via email (Eske.Derks@qimrberghofer.edu.au) so we can discuss where your interests lie and some possible projects.

Hello 2023 Honours students

I will be supervising 1 Honours student, 2 Masters students and a Clinical Psychology intern this year, and I have already committed to students who have completed research experience with me previously and are in my research group. If you are interested in music psychology research, please email me to join the UQ Music, Dance and Health research group: dingle@psy.uq.edu.au. I am open to discussing potential PhD supervision in the areas of music psychology, music and mental health, social connection, loneliness. 

Best wishes, Genevieve

I am a Professor in the School of Psychology. My laboratory, the “Queensland Attention and Control Lab”, conducts cognitive-neuroscientific research on human information processing, with a specific focus on the cognitive and neural underpinnings of human capacity limitations related to attention (e.g., why humans can’t do two things at once - multitasking). In addition, I have a specific interest in how coginitive training can enhance attentional performance. The lab uses a variety of behavioural, neuroimaging (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging - fMRI) and neurostimulation techniques (e.g., transcranial direct current stimulation - tDCS) to investigate these broad topics and employs both group and individual differences analyses. To learn more about the research conducted in the lab please visit www.paulduxlab.org. In addition, if interested in working in the lab, I strongly recommend that you email me (paul.e.dux@gmail.com) to set up a meeting.

For this year my lab will be running honours projects on the following topics:

- Mind wandering and its neural basis

- Neural theories of Multitasking

- the interaction of learning and multitasking

- Neural correlates of brain stimulation

- The parietal lobe and response selection learning.

I have a background in Social Psychology, HRM and Industrial Relations and Organisational Psychology so my areas of research interest are pretty broad; I can therefore supervise a range of different fields and topics. Generally speaking though, for psychology honours students I would be best suited to supervise those who are interested in psychological issues, processes and problems in the work-place as an applied setting. I have worked in a range of research areas which would lend themselves to potential honours projects. This includes social identity processes in the work-place, employee identity in post-merger and acquisitions, organisational justice, employee voice, employer branding and employee perceptions of employer reputation and organisational CSR credentials.  

I have worked a good deal in the area of HR analytics and employee responses to Digital HR systems. HR analytic teams in organisations are increasingly hiring organisational psychologists because of the high level of statistical competency found in the org psych area and the natural focus on employee psychological states (e.g. motivation and well-being etc) that a psychologist will bring as a lens. As such students who might be interested in moving into this area would benefit from working on projects in this area and I have a solid understanding of this field.   

I am currently working on a range of projects that crossover with organisational psychology and HR. For example employee responses (positive and negative) to HR practices, employee responses to digitised HR systems that interface with the work force, employee responses to digitised performance monitoring and metric systems, issues around digital applications in the work-place (e.g. AI systems). I am also working on a project that looks at employee (and potential employee) responses to gendered employment experiences. 

I am happy to chat with those interested in focusing their honours topic on psychology in the work-place. 

I am a political scientist with extensive industry experience working to understand social behaviour in multiple settings. I have a particular interest in projects that focus on multicultural communities. I am currently working on a research project exploring Word-of-Mouth among blood donors as a marketing strategy to increase blood donations in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. I would be keen to supervise a student interested in this project or in an idea related to word of mouth or blood donations.

Previously my research covered areas of gender advocacy, activism, refugee settlement and domestic violence. I would also be keen to supervise anther student in any of these areas and work to develop your ideas into a research project.  

I use a mentoring style in my supervision drawing on my academic knowledge across multiple disciplines and industry experience to enrich students' learning and development. 

I am a Clinical Psychologist and Senior Research Fellow, based at Recover Injury Research Centre. I also have an appointment with Metro South Addiction and Mental Health Service. I will be taking 1-2 Honours students in 2023. Please get in touch to discuss further if you are interested in these research ideas or have an idea in the area of pain, injury and rehabilitation. 

Psychological factors associated with chronic pain, medication use, mental health, and social connectedness amongst people with chronic pain, and in the context of COVID-19 

• This Honours project uses an existing longitudinal cohort study data set to examine the psychological factors associated with chronic pain, medication use, mental health, and social connectedness amongst people with chronic pain, and in the context of COVID-19. We have 4 waves of data collection (2018, 2019, 2021, 2022) completed. There is scope for you to develop your own research questions using the data collected. Please contact me for more information on the variables that have been collected.
• Examples of research questions using these data sets include:
  • Eather, Chloe-Emily, Gullo, Matthew J. and Elphinston, Rachel A. (2022). Reward drive moderates the effect of depression-related cognitive mechanisms on risk of prescription opioid misuse among patients with chronic non-cancer pain. The Journal of Pain. doi: 10.1016/j.jpain.2022.11.009
  • Yates, Eloise, Buckley, Lisa, Sterling, Michele, Cruwys, Tegan, Ashton-James, Claire, Rankin, Renee and Elphinston, Rachel (2022). Interest in Digital Peer-Delivered Interventions and Preferences to Improve Pain Self-Efficacy and Reduce Loneliness amongst Patients with Chronic Pain: A Mixed Methods Co-Design Study. JMIR Formative Research. doi: 10.2196/41211
  • Buckley, Lisa, Sterling, Michele and Elphinston, Rachel A. (2022). Chronic pain experience through COVID-19: a comparison of reports prior and during the early stages of the pandemic. Pain, Publish Ahead of Print (2), 435-442. doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002724
  • Post-traumatic stress symptoms associated with COVID-19 in people living with chronic pain (in preparation)
  • Emotional regulation and its transdiagnostic role in chronic pain and depression (in preparation)
  • The impact of exposure to COVID-19 media on the risk for PTSD in patients with chronic pain (in preparation)

Evaluation of a digital brief psychological intervention to reduce potentially unsafe opioid medications use amongst people with chronic pain

• OMED Assist is a brief psychological intervention for people with chronic pain. It uses motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioural and acceptance and commitment therapy techniques to reduce the risk of opioid medication harm. OMED Assist is delivered by psychologists over the phone, supported a mobile app to increase potential reach to those most in need. We will be piloting OMED Assist in March 2023. This Honours project would involve conducting an evaluation of feasibility of OMED Assist in clinical practice and its potential impact on medications use, pain, disability and mental health. 
• Published work includes:
  • Elphinston, Rachel A., Sterling, Michele, Leung, Janni, Gray, Paul D., Requena, Simone Scotti and Connor, Jason P (2021). Brief psychological interventions for reducing prescription opioid use, related harm and pain intensity in patients with chronic pain: a systematic review and assessment of patient interest. The Clinical Journal of Pain, 37 (4), 270-280. doi: 10.1097/AJP.0000000000000908
  • Elphinston, Rachel A., Pager, Sue, Brown, Kelly, Sterling, Michele, Fatehi, Farhad, Gray, Paul, Hipper, Linda, Cahill, Linda and Connor, Jason P. (2022). The first step in co-design of a digital brief intervention to reduce prescription opioid related harm, informed by patient lived experiences: a qualitative analysis. JMIR Preprints, 40873. 
  • Elphinston, Rachel A., Pager, Sue, Fatehi, Farhad, Sterling, Michele, Brown, Kelly, Gray, Paul, Hipper, Linda, Cahill, Lauren , Ziadni, Maisa, Worthy, Peter and Connor, Jason P. (2022). Applying patient and health professional preferences as part of co-designing a new digital brief intervention to reduce prescription opioid harm. JMIR Preprints, 40395.

Humans are inherently social. From the moment we are born, we rely significantly on others for survival. As we grow older, we come across countless opportunities to form new relationships and interact with others in a variety of settings. One common observation during these interactions is that humans tend to automatically and non-consciously imitate the actions of others, a phenomenon that has been linked to the emergence of important socio-cognitive capacities such as language acquisition and theory of mind. Unfortunately, most work exploring automatic imitation in the laboratory has relied arduous computer tasks to index imitative behaviour. As such, this project will explore the imitative tendencies of adults and children through a fun, interactive game in a real-world setting. 

I'm a Lecturer in Management at the UQ Business School, and a clinical psychologist with a background in law and justice policy. My research uses quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate how people survive and thrive, from an applied social psychological perspective. Focal areas include:

• mass gathering events like Schoolies, cold water swims, and protests;
• social identity, risk-taking, and health;
• how people manage workplace exposure to pain and suffering;
• workplace disclosures and optimal responses;
• crisis responses by services such as health, police, ambulance, mental health services; and
• how people engage with everyday science concepts like heritability, vaccination, and mental health and wellbeing (i.e., folk beliefs). 

Honours projects for 2023 can examine:

• Social psychology of Schoolies celebrations - help seeking, group perceptions, risk and distress
• Mass gathering events and identity transitions (LGBTQA+ events, youth mass gatherings, anti-vaxx or other protests)
• Barriers and facilitators of wellbeing support in the context of workplace exposure to pain and suffering
• Something original you might like to explore within the concepts and contexts above.

These projects can involve systematic or scoping reviews, novel data collection, as well as utilising pre-existing datasets. You'll have the opportunity to pitch your own ideas and collect additional data alongside the team. If you're interested or would like to know more, you can contact me at l.ferris@uq.edu.au

My research covers a range of themes, including: frontal lobe function, brain training, ageing, consciousness, and attention. I use a variety of research methods, namely brain stimulation (tDCS, tRNS, TMS), imaging techniques (MRI, MRS), cognitive paradigms, and psychophysics. In particular, in the last few years my research interests have focused on how the brain changes as we learn new tasks, what happens when our minds wander, and how we adapt our decision making under varying demands/conditions. 

For Honours, I will be running projects relating to cognitive training, mind wandering, and decision making. If you want discuss working with me this year, please get in touch (h.l.filmer@gmail.com). 

The project I am supervising this year will be on waves in brain activity ('neural oscillations') and how they modulate low-level visual perception.

Neural oscillations are a ubiquitous aspect of brain activity. Properties of these 'brain waves', their frequency, amplitude, and phase, have been shown to predict performance in a number of perceptual and cognitive domains, in both health and disease. In this project we will seek to understand the source of these relationships by determining the influence neural oscillations have on the basic building blocks of perception, and modelling these influences to determine the computations that are mediated by neural oscillations. 

This will be an EEG project involving human testing. 

All coding and modelling will be done by me, so no experience in these is necessary. 

If you have any questions about the project, please email me at: anthmharris@gmail.com

I conduct research at the School of Psychology and the Queensland Brain Institute. I summarise some basic information about my research and potential projects below -- please feel free to get in touch via email if you'd like to know more.

Background

Our experience of the visual world is one of the most studied aspects of consciousness. Even through introspection we can ask many interesting questions about how the mind works. Why do we sometimes fail to notice something we are looking at? Why does our memory not hold onto all of the detail we experience each moment? What do visual illusions tell us about the brain? I endeavour to answer these questions using a combination of creative psychophysical experiments and computational models. Psychophysical experiments are the gold-standard for quantifying what a person has or has not seen at any given moment. Computational models are built to mimic various processes that give rise to the mind. With a firm grasp on these time-tested tools, I hope to further our understanding of some of the most fundamental psychological processes, both neurophysiological and cognitive, that determine visual experience.

2023 Research project topics

Why do we sometimes fail to notice something that is right in front of us? This project will use a change detection paradigm and signal detection theory to test a new hypothesis about why people sometimes are unaware of large changes in a visual scene. 

How is perception related to the statistics of natural environments? This project will measure people's ability to discriminate visual orientation, and relate their performance to the statistics of natural environments using various Bayesian modelling techniques.

What makes horror villains look scary? This project will use behavioural testing and modelling to work out what facial features tend to make scary faces scary.

Example methods

Natural image manipulation. I spend a lot of time thinking about the psychological computations involved in experiencing the world. There are a lot of decades-old tools that mimic many of these processes, allowing us to manipulate visual stimuli with a computer in the same ways our brain does. For example, neurons in visual cortex (the part of the brain that is primarily responsible for processing visual signals from the eyes) "decompose" visual images according to orientation and resolution. By computationally editing images, we can then examine which perceptual information is available in various components of the original image. 

A recent Honours student took this approach to understand how we perceive faces. After manipulating images of celebrity faces, we had people try to recognise the celebrities. When they fail to recognise a familiar celebrity, we know that we have "thrown away" visual information that is important for face recognition.

Visual psychophysics. If we want to understand visual consciousness, the best tool we have is to simply ask people what they see . Psychophysics is a tried and tested method of measuring psychological quantities in terms of the physics of the environment. While it's easy to be allured into thinking a researcher needs millions of dollars of brain imaging equipment to understand the mind, some of our best understanding of visual consciousness comes from simple - but very carefully designed - behavioural experiments. 

I am a clinical psychologist whose research focuses on the social dimensions and determinants of health and well-being, mostly in periods of life transition — which include recovery from illness and injury, but also more normal life transitions such as starting university study, transitioning to retirement, and aging. Much of this is informed theoretically by the social identity theorising and its application to health in the Social Identity Approach to Health. If you're interested in this perspective, check out this resource that is available in the library:

Haslam, C., Jetten, J., Cruwys, T., Dingle, G. A., & Haslam, S. A. (2018). The new psychology of health: Unlocking the social cure. London and New York: Routledge.

My Honours project this year will focus on student transitions to university study. The transition is challenging for many, particularly for those who struggle to gain a sense of belonging with others in the university. And the sense of social disconnection this brings has been shown to affect academic performance and mental health and wellbeing. In this project the aim is to test the efficacy of a theoretically focused strategy to prevent social disconnection, drawing on the Social Identity Model of Identity Change (SIMIC). This will involve manipulation of either (i) the salience of multiple group membership, (ii) social group quality, or (iii) social group compatibility — all elements of SIMIC — to determine their contribution to student identification and belonging.

If you are interested in working in this area for your Honours project please get in touch (c.haslam@uq.edu.au)

This year, I am interested in supervising Honours projects on the following topics:

1. Remembering to remember. Don’t forget to feed the dog! Have I remembered to take my medicine? The successful completion of many tasks in daily life relies on the core cognitive skill of prospective memory (PM). Surprisingly, despite lapses of PM accounting for more than half of all daily cognitive errors, little is known about ‘real-life’ PM function. By using my team’s ground-breaking MEMO app – which is a world first in allowing PM function to be assessed in participants’ actual, daily lives –projects are available that will allow us to establish when, why and how real-life PM function breaks down at different stages of the adult lifespan, and what strategies most effectively prevent this from occurring. Specific projects will address key questions, such as:

• What are the key determinants of real-life PM function?
• When and why do specific types of PM error occur?
• What determines error awareness in daily life?
• How do different strategies influence specific types of PM error risk?

2. Individualised virtual reality. Virtual reality (VR) offers an immersive and ecologically valid solution that has the potential to transform the diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of many clinical disorders. Pilot data using our novel individualised VR (iVR) approach shows it has the potential to enhance self-compassion and lower depressive symptoms. Honours projects are available that will allow further assessment and evaluation of this iVR approach, addressing such questions as:

• Are the potential mental health benefits of iVR equivalent at different stages of the adult lifespan?
• Is the efficacy of iVR at improving mental health related to the degree of avatar demographic similarity (e.g., age, gender and/or ethnicity)?
• Are the effects of avatar demographic similarity mediated by one’s perceived sense of embodiment towards the avatar?

3. Self-directed ageism. In a world in which youth is idealized, ageism against older adults is both prevalent and problematic. A major survey commissioned by the World Health Organisation found that every second person in the world holds at least some ageist attitudes – and perhaps surprisingly, this often includes older adults’ themselves. Self-directed ageism refers to the tendency to internalize negative ageist beliefs and apply them to oneself. Relative to external sources of ageism, self-directed ageism appears to be experienced more frequently in older adults’ everyday lives and is more strongly related to their mental and physical wellbeing. Projects are available that address questions such as:

• What features of our social environment contribute most strongly to self-directed ageism, in terms of both strength and duration of effects?
• Are social interactions most important, and if so, does it matter who our social partners are during these interactions, or where the interaction occurs?
• Or are environmental features more important, and if so, are messages that promote youth just as damaging as those that devalue age and aging?

I am also open to other project suggestions that focus on cognitive ageing, social cognition, or prospection more broadly.

To learn more about my research please visit my personal profile page (Professor Julie Henry - UQ Researchers), and if interested in joining the lab, please contact me directly (julie.henry@uq.edu.au) to set up a meeting.

Lives Lived Well Group

Honours Student Projects

 I am a clinical psychologist and the Lives Lived Well Professor in Alcohol, Drugs, and Mental Health at the University of Queensland. I have been a chief investigator on 15 NHMRC grants including an Centre for Research Excellence. I have over 250 publications including 10 treatment and training manuals. See https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/16086 for further information.

The Lives Lived Well Group is part of the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research (NCYSUR). We conduct clinical research on the assessment, understanding and treatment of primary and comorbid alcohol and other drug (AOD) use in young people. Most of this research is conducted within Lives Lived Well, the largest AOD treatment service provider in Queensland. This provides students with opportunities to conduct research and obtain experience in real-world clinical settings.

The team have a number of clinical projects available for honours students listed below.

If you are interested in working on any of these projects please let me know.

Social Network Targeted Brief Intervention for University College Students

2021 Feasibility Trial/2022 Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT)

This study examined the feasibility and outcomes of a trivia style alcohol and other drug (AOD) harm minimisation workshop for reducing risk of AOD related harm in university students from UQ colleges. A subsample of students from one college were received a social network targeted evidence-based brief intervention for AOD use and related-harm. Students from the college which received trivia+brief intervention had better alcohol outcomes at 1 and 12-months follow up  received  outcomes of the study are currently being analysed.

Relevant papers:

Davidson, L., Ellem, R., Keane, C., Hallo, L., Hides, L. (2022). A two-stage social network intervention for reducing alcohol and other drug use in residential colleges: Protocol for a feasibility trial, Contemporary Clinical Trials 118,106779

Davidson, L., Mefedova, V., Walter, Z. & Hides, L. (in press) Student Perceptions of the Current Drinking Culture in Three Australian Residential Colleges: Drinking Motives, Consequences and Recommendations for Harm Minimisation Strategies, Drug & Alcohol Review

2022 Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT)

This three-arm cluster randomised controlled trial compared the efficacy of the full QuikFix College program (AOD trivia harm minimisation workshop + social network targeted evidence-based brief intervention) to AOD trivia harm minimisation workshop alone and residential college AOD education and messaging as usual. Six residential colleges participated in the project, with two colleges each randomised to each condition. Of the total 892 new residents enrolled at the six colleges, 716 (80.3%) consented to participate and completed the baseline survey. A total of 657 (91.8%) completed the 6-week follow-up survey and 101 students from the QuikFix college program group who were identified as socially influential were offered the brief telehealth intervention. Of these students, 71 (70.3%) completed at least assessment feedback (Module 1) with a clinician over the phone. The research follow ups are ongoing

Implementation and Outcomes of a Trauma-Informed Model of Residential AOD Care

This study developed, implemented and evaluated a new evidence-based, trauma-informed model of residential care. 

A new trauma-Informed model of trauma-informed care was developed. A new structured 6 week group program was developed consisting of an introductory group, and three group programs targeting AOD use, mental wellbeing/ill-health, coping  and healthy lifestyles. The implementation of the six-week trauma-informed model of care into the residential treatment facility was completed in November 2021, and the sustainability phase of the project commenced in January 2022.  Eight cycles of the new 6-week program have been successfully delivered.  Staff clinical supervision concluded in December 2021 and was provided for a total of 53 days, averaging 5.7 attendees per day, and 239 hours of clinical supervision.  The transition to clinical supervision being provided by the clinical team leader will be supported.   The one- and three-month assessments have been completed by 126 (84%) and 103 (68.66%) of participants respectively. Additionally, 6-month follow-ups have commenced, with 68 (45.3%) completed to date.  The new model included the implementation of individual trauma-focused therapy (Cognitive Processing Therapy, CPT) for clients with comorbid post-traumatic stress disorder. Recruitment was completed at the end of November 2021, with 150 young people recruited to the trial. Among those recruited to the research, 73 (48.6%) were eligible for CPT and 33 (45.2%) were provided with individual CPT therapy.  Of the 33 participants in CPT therapy, 29 (93.5%), 27 (90%) and 12 (70.6%) of those eligible have completed the one-, three- and six-month follow up respectively. The evaluation of staff and service outcomes is ongoing.

Relevant papers: 

Mefodeva, V., Carlyle, M., Walter, Z., Chan, G., Hides, L. Polysubstance use in young people accessing residential and day treatment services for substance use: substance use profiles, psychiatric comorbidity, and treatment completion, Addiction (in press)

Mefodeva, V., Carlyle, M., Walter, Z., Hides, L, Client and staff perceptions of the integration of trauma informed care and specialist posttraumatic stress disorder treatment in residential treatment facilities for substance use: A qualitative study, Drug and Alcohol Review (in press)

First Step Brief Intervention for AOD Use

This project co-designed, implemented, and evaluated a brief intervention for complex clients (e.g.  comorbid mental health, homelessness) accessing AOD treatment services, which is to be delivered as the first part of a stepped care model of care. 

The proportion of new clients being sent and completing outcome measures was 97% and 62% respectively during the trial. To date, 18 counsellors and managers have been trained in First Step. Recruitment was completed in September 2021. A total of 217 young people were recruited to the trial, with 174 (80%) receiving at least the first Module of First Step, and 94 (46%) completed all three modules. The one-, three- and six-month follow-up surveys have been completed by 81%, 75% and 72% of participants respectively. The 12-month follow-ups are ongoing. To date, 110 out of 134 participants (82%) due for the 12 month follow up have completed it. The sustainability phase of the project commenced in in November 2021 and will continue until November 2022. The proportion of new clients being sent and completing outcome measures was 97% and 58% respectively during the first six months of sustainability.  

Youth Wellbeing Survey

We conducted a national survey of 2500 young people (aged 16 to 25 years) to increase current understanding of the mental wellbeing of Australian youth and how it is related to mental health symptoms. A subsample (n = 400) completed diagnostic interviews at baseline and 12-18 months follow up.

Potential honours student projects include

• Psychometric studies comparing the reliability and validity of different wellbeing measures and their associations with mental health symptoms
• Prospective studies examining the relationship between mental wellbeing and mental health symptoms and disorders

Relevant papers:

Hides, L. Quinn, C., Stoyanov, S. Cockshaw, W., Mitchell, T. &  Kavanagh, D. J. (2016). Is the mental wellbeing of young Australians best represented by a single, multidimensional or bifactor model? Psychiatry Research, 241:1-7. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2016.04.07777 

Hides, L., Quinn, C., Stoyanov, S., Cockshaw, W., Kavanagh, D.J., Shochet, I., Deane, F., Kelly, P. & Keyes, C. L. M. Testing the Interrelationship Between Mental Wellbeing and Mental Distress in Young People, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1-11  doi:10.1080/17439760.2019.1610478

Cannabis, and psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) in young people

Psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) are odd or unusual thoughts/experiences that affect up to a third of young people. PLEs predict up to 25 and 5-6 times the risk of developing psychotic and depressive/anxiety disorders respectively. Cannabis use has a robust causal association with psychosis, and up to 90% of current cannabis users report PLEs. There is a complex relationship between cannabis and risk of psychotic disorders, and it is important to delineate the risk factors for PLEs in cannabis users.

A potential honours projects will examine the longitudinal relationship between cannabis, and PLEs in over 1000 young cannabis users. The project will examine the role of moderating or mediating factors such as social support/functioning, trauma, subjective effects, and personality characteristics.

Relevant papers:

Hides, L., Baker, A. L., Norberg, M., Copeland, J., Quinn, C., Walter, Z., Leung, J., Stoyanov, S. & Kavanagh, D. (2020). Research protocol for a randomized controlled trial of Keep it Real, a web-based program for cannabis use and psychotic experiences in young people, Journal of Internet Medical Research (JIMR) Research Protocols, 29;9(7):315803. doi: 10.2196/15803

Hides, L., Lubman, D. I., Buckby, J., Yuen, H. P. Y., Cosgrave, L., Baker, L., & Yung, A. R. (2009). The association between early cannabis use on psychotic-like experiences in a community adolescent sample, Schizophrenia Research, 112:130-135. DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2009.04.001

Stafford, E., Hides, L. & Kavanagh, D. J. (2015) The acceptability, usability and short-term outcomes of Get Real: A Web-based program for psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), Internet Interventions 2(3):266–271 doi:10.1016/j.invent.2015.05.004    

QuikFix: Randomized controlled trial (RCT) of motivational interviewing enhanced with individualised personality-specific coping skills training for young people with alcohol-related injuries and illnesses accessing emergency services

On weekends, large numbers of young people engage in heavy drinking in night-time economies populated by clubs and bars. This increases the risk of alcohol-related injuries, illnesses (i.e. severe alcohol intoxication), and violence in night-time economies, and presentations to emergency departments.  Much of this adversity could be prevented if more young people had access to effective brief interventions for alcohol use. Brief motivational interviewing (MI) is considered the opportunistic intervention of choice for reducing risky alcohol use in young people, but recent meta-analyses report modest effects. Few studies have targeted individual patient factors to increase MI effectiveness. QuikFix is a brief motivational interviewing intervention enhanced with individualised personality-specific coping skills training for reducing alcohol consumption and related problems in young people with alcohol-related injuries or illnesses. This RCT compared the efficacy of telephone-delivered QuikFix MI with standard MI, and an Assessment Feedback/Information (AF/I) control in 398 young people with alcohol-related injuries or illnesses. Participants were assessed at baseline and 1, 3, 6 and 12 months follow-up. The RCT is complete. 

Potential student projects include:

• Cross sectional and prospective studies examining the relationship between substance use, mental health, personality, injury, functioning and social cognitive variables (self-efficacy, alcohol use expectancies) in young people.
• Studies examining moderators and mediators of treatment outcome in the RCT.
• Cost effectiveness of QuikFix and the other brief interventions.

Relevant papers:

Hides, L., Quinn, C., Chan, G., Cotton, S., Pocuca, N., Connor, J. P., Witkiewitz, K., Daglish, M. R. C., Young, R. McD., Stoyanov, S. & Kavanagh, D. J. Telephone-based motivational interviewing enhanced with individualised personality-specific coping skills training for young people with alcohol-related injuries and illnesses accessing emergency or rest/recovery services: A randomized controlled trial (QuikFix), Addiction, 2020/6/7. doi:10.1111/add.15146

Hides, L., Kavanagh, D. J., Daglish, M., Cotton, S. M., Connor, J. P., Barendregt, J. J., Young, R. McD., Sanders, D., White, A. & Mergard, L. The Quik Fix study: a randomised controlled trial of brief interventions for young people with alcohol related injuries and illnesses accessing emergency department and crisis support care, BMC Emergency Medicine, 2014, 14:19. doi:10.1186/1471-227X-14-19

Hides, L., Quinn, C., Wilson, H. & Sanders, D. QuikFix: Enhanced motivational interviewing interventions for youth substance use, Advances in Dual Diagnosis; 9 (2/3):53-65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ADD-03-2016-0008

Randomised controlled trial of a telephone-delivered social well-being and engaged living (SWEL) intervention for disengaged at-risk youth 

Adolescence is a period of rapid physical, emotional and social growth. Many young people lack the socio-emotional skills to negotiate the transition thorough adolescence and are at risk of disengaging from education, family and community. This RCT investigated the efficacy of the telephone-delivered social wellbeing and engaged living (SWEL) intervention for increasing vocational and social engagement, emotional health and the well-being of 273 disengaged and at-risk youth. SWEL was compared to befriending and one-session psychoeducation control conditions. Participants were assessed at baseline and 2, 8 and 14 months follow-up. The RCT is complete.

Potential honours student projects include cross-sectional and prospective studies examining the relationship between engagement in training, education &/or employment, mental health, wellbeing, functioning and substance use in young people.

Relevant papers:

Stain, H. J. Baker, A. L., Jackson, C., Lenroot, R., Paulik, G., Attia, J., Wolfenden, L., Stoyanov, S. R., Devir, H. & Hides, L. (2019) Study protocol: a randomised controlled trial of a telephone delivered social wellbeing and engaged living (SWEL) psychological intervention for disengaged youth, BMC Psychiatry, 19(1):136. doi.org/10.1186/s12888-019-2116-5

FullFix: Transdiagnostic cognitive behavioural treatment for young people with comorbid alcohol and/or other drug (AOD) and mental health problems

Transdiagnostic cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) cuts across diagnostic boundaries to target common psychological factors that underlie multiple disorders. While there is promising evidence for transdiagnostic CBT for depression and anxiety, limited research has evaluated these treatments among people with comorbid alcohol and/or other drug (AOD) and mental health problems. This RCT is examining the feasibility, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness of a new risk-targeted transdiagnostic CBT telehealth program (FullFix) among 157 young people accessing treatment for comorbid AOD use and mental health problems. Participants will be randomised to receive either the FullFix intervention plus standard AOD or standard AOD care alone.  Participants are reassessed at 6 weeks, 3-, 6-, and 12-months on the primary outcomes of AOD use and mental health symptoms, and secondary outcomes of emotion regulation, social connectedness, perceived self-efficacy and coping skills. The RCT is ongoing with 86 participants recruited to date.

Potential honours student projects include examining baseline characteristic and baseline transdiagnostic risk factors on treatment and the severity of AOD use and mental health problems use in young people.

Relevant papers: 

Walter Z, Quinn CA, Dingle G, ......Hides, L. FullFix: a randomised controlled trial of a telephone delivered transdiagnostic intervention for comorbid substance andmental health problems in young people. BMJ Open 2021;11:e045607. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-045607

Grit: Strengths-based transdiagnostic self-regulation group program for young people accessing residential treatment for substance use disorders.

There is substantial room for improvement in the outcomes of youth substance use treatment. Interventions that simultaneously target risk factors and build protective factors for youth substance use may improve outcomes. This cohort-controlled trial examined whether the Grit group program, enhanced the substance use, mental ill-health and wellbeing outcomes of  young people accessing residential treatment for substance use disorders. Participants were 251 young people (18-35 years) accessing two residential rehabilitation services in Queensland, Australia. Participants received either 6-weeks of standard treatment, or standard treatment + Grit (2 sessions each week for 6 weeks). Participants substance use, depression/anxiety and wellbeing outcomes were assessed at baseline, 6 weeks, 3, 6 and 12 months post-program enrolment. The project is nearly complete.

 Potential honours student projects include:

• Cross sectional and prospective studies examining the relationship between substance use, mental ill-health, wellbeing, strengths, emotion regulation, mindfulness and social connections.
• Studies examining moderators and mediators of treatment outcome in the cohort-controlled trial.

Relevant papers: 

Quinn CA, Walter ZC, de Andrade D, Dingle G, Haslam C, Hides L. Controlled Trial Examining the Strength-Based Grit Wellbeing and Self-Regulation Program for Young People in Residential Settings for Substance Use. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Oct 24;19(21):13835. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192113835.

I am interested in research that focuses on the developmental outcomes of children and adolescents and the influence that working with families and schools can have on these outcomes. I am also interested exploring the interplay between these contexts.

I am currently working as the National Project Manager on the Thriving Kids and Parents Project. This project is funded by the Commonwealth Department of Education and offers free parenting seminars to parents: Seminar content will cover principles of positive parenting, helping children manage everyday worries, and supporting children to develop healthy relationships. Seminar content aims to help parents understand why kids behave the way they do and learn strategies to develop their child’s ability to calm down, manage their emotions and overcome challenges, as well as develop healthy peer relationships.learn strategies to develop their child. Teachers will be invited to attend and will also receive a summary  the content of seminars. Parents will report on their child’s emotional wellbeing and behaviour, parenting practices, parenting confidence, and home-school partnership before the seminars, at 6 weeks and 12 weeks. The student's project will focus on aspects the home-school partnership.

In 2023, I will be supervising two honours students in the individual thesis stream. I would like to take at least one student for Project 1 below, and a second student on the same topic or one of the other three topics:

1) Tell me your stories: Exploring the links between narratives of discrimination and psychological adjustment in People of Colour

One inescapable challenge that manifests in the daily lives of People of Colour is the experiences of racial-ethnic prejudice and discrimination—indeed, the literature is replete with findings that demonstrate the clear link between these experiences and poor psychological adjustment in this population. An emerging literature has begun to suggest, however, that some individuals appear to turn the ‘bad’ into ‘good’ and experience positive psychological adjustment outcomes instead.

The aim of this project is to gain insights into why experiences of racial-ethnic prejudice and discrimination are linked to negative mental health outcomes for many, but to positive mental health outcomes for some. To do this, we have asked People of Colour to tell their stories of everyday experiences of racial-ethnic prejudice and discrimination. We are interested in how the different ways in which individuals reflect on their experiences and tell their stories are linked to negative and positive mental health measures. 

2) Parental racial socialisation, Multiracial identity, and psychological distress in an Australian Multiracial Sample 

Multiracial individuals are a rapidly growing population who face unique psychological challenges due to their multiple racial heritages. To date, however, research on this population have almost exclusively been conducted in the United States. These US-based studies suggest that positive parental racial socialisation messages help support the development of positive Multiracial identity in children. Last year, one of my Masters students investigated whether this finding on the protective role of parents extends to the Australian context, where racial terminology is not endorsed due to being considered socially taboo. My Masters student's findings revealed findings that were in stark contrast to those based on the US population.

I am interested in working with an honours student to figure out WHY there are cross-cultural differences on the parents' role in identity development in Multiracial individuals in the US vs Australia. Given the complexity of this topic, for this project specifically, I am looking for a student with lived experiences of being a Multiracial individual. 

3) How do accents influence the way we perceive and treat others? 

From the first few months of life, infants prefer to listen to and look at people who speak with a native accent. This preference for native-accented speakers carries on into childhood and even across adulthood; for example, pre-schoolers prefer to be friends with native-accented children and employers show strong bias for native-accented job candidates. Although the prevalence of accent-based prejudice and discrimination is now becoming increasingly more evident, what actually drives this form of bias is relatively unknown.

I am interested in working with a student who would like to investigate the social-cognitive underpinnings of accent-based prejudice and discrimination in children and/or adults. Some questions we can look at are:

(i) Do accents influence our ability to take each others' perspectives?

(ii) What are some implicit cues hidden in our day-to-day interactions that perpetuate accent-based prejudice and discrimination?

(iii) Are we more empathic towards individuals who share our native accent over those who speak with foreign accents?

I am happy to discuss any other ideas on this topic that you may have.

4) Meta-analytic review on a topic of mutual interest

If you have an interest in a specific topic with approximately 20 or more studies in the existing literature, we can work on a meta-analytic review of that topic. I have supervised several meta-analyses in the past and will provide guidance and training on each step of the process (i.e., no previous experience or knowledge required). If you are interested in this, please let me know what topic you'd like to investigate.

I will be at the Honours Meet and Greet on Friday 20th January. If you are interested in working with me, please come chat with me at the session and/or email me (k.imuta@uq.edu.au), so that we can get to know each other a little bit.

My areas of research are in the fields of human-technology interaction, decision-making, wisdom, and knowledge management.

The question that whether technology enhances or hinders our decision-making, cognition, and perception of phenomena is in most cases, not a technical one. For this reason, I am interested in any research that broadens our understanding of information technology (as a tool, resource, and format) and its relation to people in daily life or organisational contexts.

I would like to invite students with an interest in emerging technologies and their relation to individual and cultural factors to apply. 

Title: The role of adjournments in negotiation

Overview: Negotiation is a process used to facilitate transactions. It is necessary where needs are idiosyncratic or clear price signals are unavailable. It is a skill needed in many jobs and workplaces. But negotiation best practices remain a mystery to many. In this project, we will explore one mechanism that may facilitate getting to a win-win agreement, namely taking adjournments. Adjournments are temporary breaks from the back and forth of making offers and proposals. Taking an adjournment may help negotiators consider new information, develop a new approach to interacting with the counterpart, and to craft proposals that leave both sides better off. This project involves conducting an experiment to examine the effect of adjournments on win-win outcomes.

Other topics: I am also available to supervise on topics that involve organisational psychology, personality, and/or emotions.

My areas of research are in the fields of social, moral, and environmental psychology. I am interested in supervising projects on the following three topics:

Who Supports Structural Change

Solving social issues (e.g., racial prejudice, climate change, or healthy eating) is often seen to be the responsibility of individuals. However, effective solutions require structural and institutional changes. In this project, we will investigate who typically supports structural change over individual-level solutions to social issues. We will examine if those who are most vulnerable and disadvantaged by the status quo (e.g., low-income individuals, racial minorities) are more inclined to endorse structural change, while members of advantaged groups may be more likely to resist it due to their vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Structural Solutions to Climate Change

In a related project, we will explore the conditions under which people support structural climate policies over those aimed at individual-level behaviour change. In previous studies, we have found that perceiving one’s country as wealthy and perceiving one’s country as unequal increases people’s support for structural solutions to climate change. We might investigate whether perceiving one’s country to have a historical responsibility for climate change may increase people’s support for structural solutions.

Moral Concern for Biodiversity

In this project, we will study why and when want to preserve biodiversity. For example, we will explore the psychological mechanism through which people show moral concern for biodiversity.

Psychology Honours Projects 2022:

The Self-reference effect and the Sense of Self

When we think about ourselves – what we like, don’t like, our skills, and our social relationships – we delve into autobiographical memories of what we did and how we felt during specific life events.  That is, our sense of self is tied to information that we can recall that is referenced to ourselves (Conway, 2005).

We can show this experimentally through the learning and recall of new information: we tend to recognise it more accurately when it is related to ourselves (my mug, my apple) than information that is related to another person (Cunningham et al, 2008, Rogers et al 1979). This is the typical Self-reference effect (SRE).

Our recent work has shown that it matters who the other person is. When the other person is stranger, the SRE is strongly evident. However, when the other person is known to us we know a lot of information.

In these projects, we will vary the identity of the self in relation to the other (for example, self-celebrity, mother-child, friend-friend) to investigate whether the SRE, and hence the sense of self, is stronger in the context of a close or distant social relationship.

We anticipate that participants for these experiments will probably be recruited and tested online.

Research profile:

UQ page: https://www.psy.uq.edu.au/directory/index.html?id=1180#show_Research

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ada_Kritikos

Dissecting the neural mechanism of a goal-directed behaviour

Goal-directed behaviour is characterized by selecting actions according to desired goals. It is a fundamental evolutionary behavioural strategy which is impaired in many psychological diseases such as obsessive-compulsory disorder. However, the underlying general neural basis is poorly understood. To address this question, we use C. elegans, a tiny worm with only 302 neurons as a research model. The simple nervous system and the completely mapped connectome ensure the dissection of animal behaviours at a single neuron level in C. elegans. When worms are deprived of food, the desire for food drives them to search for food. In this searching behaviour, animals change their directions by flexibly selecting different orientation strategies such as sharp turning, shallow turning and gradually bending. However, the neural mechanisms of how this desire-for-food signalling regulates flexible behavioural actions are not clear. We hypothesize that a neural circuit which includes 1) the sensation of the desire signalling, 2) the translation of this signalling into different motor actions and 3) the executions of different motor actions for orientation regulates the entire goal-directed behaviour. We will use optogenetics, calcium imaging, molecular genetics and quantitative behaviour approaches to characterize this behaviour and dissect the underlying neural mechanisms. We want to recruit 1-2 students who are interested in testing some of these hypotheses. They will not only have opportunities to address important scientific questions in this area, but also receive systematic training in neuroscience including molecular genetics, transgenic animal generation, behavioural analysis, optogenetics and imaging. 

I am a clinical neuropsychologist at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. We have an ongoing research project at the RBWH and STARS to validate a number of mood questionnaires in the stroke population. Recruitment is at 50% and we would like an enthusiastic and independent honours student to join us! This project will also give you experience in conducting diagnostic clinical interviews and an opportunity to sit in the stroke multi-disciplinary meetings and chat with other clinicians. 

If you would like to know more about this project, please do not hesitate to contact me on 3646 1668 or email ada.lo2@health.qld.gov.au

Research area: Educational psychology/learning sciences

Overarching research problem: Understanding how people learn and how learning in and outside of educational environments can be enhanced. 

Technologies have provided great opportunities for accessing information and learning in the 21st Century. The use and development of these technologies exploded during the pandemic and are poised to evolve rapidly as artificial intelligence advances. However, along with these developments have come many questions. What do easy access to information and AI tools mean for acquiring and updating understanding? These are the questions we are addressing in the Learning, Instruction, and Technology Lab.

I am an associate professor of educational psychology in the School of Education. I am also affiliated with the School of Psychology. I have supervised or co-supervised over 40 research students, the majority of whom have been in psychology. I lead the Learning, Instruction and Technology Lab, where you will have the opportunity to work with a team of experienced researchers, postdocs and PhD candidates all working in the learning sciences and educational psychology.

The central focus of our research involves examining self-regulation and metacognition in conceptual learning scenarios. Various methodologies are being employed in this research from lab experiments to qualitative and experiential studies. The broad paradigm is use-inspired basic research, this means that there is scope for qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods studies.

Key questions in our research are:

- How do people correct misconceptions and what affective and cognitive processes are involved?
- How do people develop sophisticated conceptual understanding in digital and informal learning environments?
- How can metacognition and self-regulation help people progress in their learning, particularly in digital and informal learning environments?

We are looking to work with students who have a genuine interest in learning and education.

Please note: we don't do any research on the clinical aspects of educational psychology (e.g. dyslexia, maths anxiety, learning difficulties). 

I am a Lecturer in clinical psychology. I am interested in understanding the cognitive, emotional and behavioural mechanisms that underlie psychopathology. My research focuses primarily on investigating mechanisms associated with adaption or failure to adapt to bereavement, loss and other potential traumatic events. This includes a focus on autobiographical memory, future prospection and emotion regulation processes.

My projects apply experimental paradigms from social and cognitive psychology with healthy, clinical analogue and clinical populations. I also undertake experience sampling studies (ESM, also known as ecological momentary assessment) to investigate emotions and behaviour in real life setting

One line of research is focused on investigating the mechanisms that underlie emotion regulation outcomes. This includes experimental  and longitudinal investigations of the role of stressor controllability on emotion regulation outcomes, and emotion regulation in daily life using experience sampling methodology. 

A second line of research involves investigating the mechanisms underlying clinical dysfunctions in autobiographical remembering and future-related imaginings. This line of research investigates how manipulating autobiographical recall, future imaginings, and self-identity constructs impact on mood, decision making and current functioning. 

Research experience PSYC2991/2992 Semester 2, 2022:

Self-identity changes appear to be a key feature of stressor-related disorders, but research is spread across a number of clinical areas. This project aims to synthesize our current knowledge of self-identity processes across stressor-related disorders (e.g., PTSD, prolonged grief responses, adjustment disorders) and involves working with me and a PhD candidate within the lab on a systematic review of the self-identity constructs across trauma and stress related disorders

My honours projects typically involve student or online populations. However, if you are already working with a clinical population I would be happy to discuss a project.

Some project areas include: 

Emotion regulation and coping with stressors:  Theoretical models of emotion regulation increasingly incorporate the role of context and individual difference factors as important determinants of wellbeing.  However, empirical evidence is lacking. This wider project is applying multiple methodologies to test predictions from some of these models.  Methodologies include survey questionnaires, ecological momentary assessment/ experience sampling methodology (EMA/ESM) to examine the context specific effectiveness of regulation strategies and emotion regulation goals in real life, and laboratory studies examining context specific regulation outcomes. 

• In 2022 data will be collected using online platforms. 
• If you are interested in EMA, please note that data analysis requires the use of multilevel statistics.  This approach is for someone who likes or is interested in learning statistics,

Self-identity processes in response to change:  Theoretical models argue that adapting to significant life changes involves modifying aspects of self-identity to reflect the new reality.  This line of research investigates different facets of self identity (e.g. content, structure and process) and the irrelationship with emotion regulation, mental health and well being outcomes. 

Episodic foresight allows us to mentally project ourselves into the future, and subsequently act in adaptive future-oriented ways; and it is thought to be a uniquely human ability. However, research has found that this essential ability declines as we age. Given how critical episodic foresight is in our day to day lives (think planning dinner or setting a reminder to take medication), a decline may have significant implications for quality of life. This program of research is focused on understanding how emotions impact episodic foresight and involves use of an electronic board game known as the Virtual Week - Episodic Foresight task.  It may involve some modification of the programming of this task

In 2023, I am interested projects in supervising research projects focusing on improving the recruitment and retention of donors of substances of human origin (e.g., blood donation, faecal microbiome).  For examples of some of the work that we do in this area, please see: research.psy.uq.edu.au/dorn.  Projects may focus on:

1. Intervening to promote blood donation
   1. Blood donation is a highly affective behaviour and donors report a range of emotions both in anticipation of and because of donating. Despite this, the role of affect in promoting donor retention has been largely overlooked. In one study we will explore the impact of a multi-part intervention inspired by research in the realm of emotion regulation on the emotions experienced by first-time whole blood donors and their subsequent donation behaviour. In a second study we will design and evaluate an intervention to induce gratitude in would-be donors and evaluate how this impacts their subsequent donation behaviour.
2. Determining whether we can use disgust to motivate prosocial behaviour
   1. Faecal microbiota transplant (FMT) donors are in increasing demand.  Yet poo is a core disgust elicitor, that we are unlikely to overcome in this context.  So how can we work with disgust to encourage people to explore whether they would be eligible to donate?  In this study we will explore whether we can use compassionate messaging to encourage people to take the first step to becoming a FMT donor. 

PROJECT: Brain mechanisms underlying successful learning

 I am interested in working with honours students on projects exploring what changes in the brain when we successfully learn new things. This work uses electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings - which are a simple, non-invasive way to measure the electrical activity present in the brain. Using EEG we will investigate the way in which both "brain" training and our beliefs about learning (i.e. are we "good learners" or "bad learners") influence our ability to learn. 

PROJECT: Meta cognition (x2)

I also am interested in working with honours students on projects exploring meta-cognition. Meta cognition is broadly defined as knowledge about our own thoughts, behaviour and learning. It consists of: meta-cognitive skills and knowledge including strategies a student might use to support their learning, and meta-cognitive monitoring including awareness of which strategies work for a student as well as their motivation for learning in adults and adolescents.

About me and my laboratory:

My interests are within the broad area of Cognitive Neuroscience, with a particular emphasis on understanding the neural bases of attention, prediction and decision making.

If offered a place you will become part of a large research team, with several fellow students plus numerous research fellows and research support staff. You will have an opportunity to learn one or more of the following experimental methods: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), psychophysics and human neuropsychology. I am particularly keen to hear from students who wish to continue with a career in cognitive neuroscience research.

You can find out more about my lab and our research here: https://sites.google.com/a/uq-qbi-cogneuro.com/mattingley-lab/

My laboratory is based at the Queensland Brain Institute (on the St Lucia Campus). This is where you will undertake your research, attend weekly lab meetings and become part of a dynamic team working to understand brain function in health and disease. You will receive all necessary training in relevant brain imaging and/or brain stimulation techniques, and you will  develop a high level of proficiency in these techniques by the end of the honours year. We always endeavour to publish the results of honours projects in a peer-reviewed journal.

I am offering several research projects in my lab in 2023. These projects will investigate how brain activity gives rise to our ability to pay attention to incoming sensory information, to make predictions about future sensory events, and to make optimal decisions based on our perceptual experiences.

If you are interested in working with me for your honours project in 2020, please get in touch via email as soon as possible: j.mattingley@uq.edu.au

I am a Health Psychologist (UK registered) currently working as a Research Fellow at the General Practice Clinical Unit at The University of Queensland. The projects available this year fall within the following areas:

• Health psychology and behavioural medicine,
• Behaviour change interventions,
• Self-management interventions in chronic disease,
• N-of-1 trials and single-case studies, 
• Research in the area of chronic fatigue and pain 

These projects are suitable for those with an interest in health psychology or clinical psychology. There are multiple possible projects available and the design of studies (e.g. participant population) can be adapted to suit the interests of students, where possible. 

An example of a project an Honours student may work on is here: https://medical-school.uq.edu.au/project/N-of-1/making-it-personal

I am currently working on the following topics in the area of jury decision-making:

• The influence of gender-based stereotypes on evaluations of defendants, victims, and experts, particularly how these stereotypes influence thinking about case evidence.
• How evidence can be used to shape the story that jurors create.
• How the negative effect of stereotypes can be challenged through education and other strategies.

I have additional research interests in cognitive dissonance, attitude-behaviour relations, and stress and coping. 

Please feel free to get in touch with me if you want to discuss any of these areas or related topics that you are interested in.

Find out more: http://www.psy.uq.edu.au/research/appliedsocial/

I am a Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Neuropsychologist and my research is primarily in the area of working with older adults. I take a strengths-based approach both in terms of my clinical work and my research, with an overarching goal of improving the wellbeing of older adults in particular.

This year I have two areas that I am interested in pursuing with an honours student and so you would be able to choose which one you would like to engage in.

The first is in the area of caregiving and identifying caregiving styles, within an Australian context in particular.

The second is in the area of downsizing, and in particular, the emotional and practical consequences of the need to downsize.

My research looks at parenting and parenting interventions to prevent and treat child behavioural and emotional problems. Honours projects in 2023 will focus on:

1) parenting at the transition to school by conducting surveys and focus groups with parents whose children are soon to start school or have recently commenced schooling. 

2) screen use among young children, by conducting a systematic review of factors associated with screen use in young children and survey/interviews with parents of <5s to better understand parental screen use goals with young children. 

3) examine child self-regulation by conducting a validation of a newly developed measure and exploring how child self-regulation relates to parenting self-regulation.

Research indicates that parents engage with their male or female children in different ways from birth. This is evident in the provision of toys, engagement in play activities, and the amount and type of language that parents use when interacting with their children. One form of parental language input, mental state language, is critical for children’s social development. This form of language involves parent talk about thoughts, desires and emotions. A relatively small body of research suggests that parents may vary the amount and quality of mental state language when engaging with their male or female child, although findings are inconsistent.

I am seeking 2 honours students to investigate (1) whether and how parental mental state language input varies across male or female children and (2) whether gendered or gender-neutral toys elicit variable qualities and amounts of parental mental state language.

An honours project is available on neuropsychological test development for tracking change in dementia. Being able to accurately measure change longitudinally in cognitive performance is crucial for therapeutic development in degenerative dementias. Both floor and ceiling effects limit performance of existing tests like the ADAS-Cog test which has been "industry standard" in drug trials of Alzheimer's disease. To this end a new suite of tests has been developed specifically with this goal in mind. This project will examine performance of novel language and memory tasks with both longitudinal data and cross-sectional data across different diagnostic groups. The aim of the project is to critically evaluate the performance of these novel tests in contrast to existing standards. 

Guiding principles: Research can have a big impact on the world. As per our team's guiding principles, we think there are some important, neglected questions that your research could help tackle. I hope to help you make a dint on those questions, while learning some valuable skills for your life and career.

Key Skills You'll Learn / Use

• Systematic review and meta-analysis—Top of the hierarchy of evidence for good reasons (usu. provide strong causal evidence)
• Expert elicitation and Delphi studies—Instead of experiments, sometimes we need to synthesise the opinions of experts (e.g., via the Delphi method)
• Causal inference from survey data—Survey data is generally cheap and easy to collect; causal inference can be tricky but still worth trying.

For more details about any of the projects below (e.g., pitch/rationale, resources), see this database of ideas.

High priority projects:

1. Which specific interventions (e.g., forecasting training, memos) work to improve decision-making?
2. How do we best motivate people to safeguard the future of humanity (e.g., climate change, preventing pandemics)?
3. What do experts think are the best ways of building communities of prosocial people working to improve the world?
4. What are the best ways of making good decisions in groups?
5. How can we make people feel more intrinsically motivated to help others effectively?
6. What rules would the public accept when it comes to artificial intelligence?

Other projects:

1. Which type of exercise is best for depression?
2. How well does online learning work for health professionals?
3. Can we improve judgement and forecasting in coaches and sport teams?
4. Poker with purpose: use games and sport to engage young people in probability and decision-making

I am an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the School of Psychology, with an affiliation at the Centre for Advanced Imaging (CAI). I am primarily interested in how structural and functional brain changes are associated with mental illness, particularly depression and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I am also interest in neuropsychiatric complications, such as depression, anxiety or sleep disturbances, as a secondary consequence of brain injury (stroke and traumatic brain injury [TBI]). I use advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques and computational neuroscience methods to explore the relationship between microstructural white matter changes, functional connectivity, and symptoms of mental illness. I am also interested in recent developments in MRI to study neuroinflammation and the use of psilocybin-assisted therapy for the treatment of depression.

My research is in social and organisational psychology, and I am currently working as Deputy Head of the UQ Business School.  Further details/information about me and my research interests can be found on my UQ staff website.  I am open to supervising up to 2 psychology honours students, which will be co-supervised with Dr. Elena Zubielevitch (postdoctoral fellow).

We are keen to advance projects relevant to understanding the psychology of employee complaints. What is the psychological experience of expressing dissatisfaction with an organisation, its people, or its processes/decisions?  What are the barriers/facilitators affecting the decision to express a complaint?  What determines whether that complaint is made formally (e.g., to a supervisor), informally (e.g., to coworkers), externally (e.g., on social media), and/or through indirect means (e.g., counterproductive work behaviour or vigilantism)?  These questions connect to our broader understanding of how interpersonal conflicts can be managed more effectively in organisations.

I am a psychologist with more than ten years of experience working with clinical assessments of children and adolescents across Brazil and Australia.

My research interests are mainly around antisocial behaviour and conduct problems in clinical and non-clinical populations of youth. This year I will be working on projects involving both clinical and developmental research. The main topics I will be developing include:

- Patenting intervention for parents with problem substance use

- Clinical assessments and brief interventions for young people reporting substance use-related problems.

- Childhood externalising traits (e.g.., impulsivity) and their relationship with starting and maintenance of addiction in later childhood/adolescence/early-adulthood

During 2023 I will take one honours thesis student. Please reach out if you have any questions (s.parker@psy.uq.edu.au).

My research interests lie in the field of emotional face processing and awareness from a cognitive neuroscience perspective.

Current projects address visual and spatial processing of faces that vary according to their social and emotional features. For example, is our attention really attracted to emotional faces? Does awareness come first or is attention attracted before awareness? 

This year (2023), I will be supervising one Honours project in which we will examine the efficiency to detect an emotional face in the peripheral visual field, when visibility is limited by a cluttered environment.  The question will be addressed through an experiment that measures behaviour (reaction times/errors) and electrophysiological (surface EEG) variables. The aim of the study will be to determine how much awareness we have of the emotional faces when it appears in the peripheral field, and we will try te determine whether awareness precedes shifts in spatial attention. 

I am a behavioural scientist with a keen interest in addressing issues of societal disadvantage and inequality. I have a strong understanding of, and experience in using, empirical research methods to evaluate programs and administrative data within educational settings. I seek opportunities to explore real-world problems in the field of education. Prior to my research career, I spent an extended period living and working in remote Indigenous communities on Queensland's Cape York where I co-designed and implemented financial literacy programs for the benefit of residents. I am particularly passionate about bridging the gap between academic research and industry.

Currently, I can supervise one honours student who can select a topic from two projects available. The project will be co-supervised by Professor Karen Thorpe (ARC Laureate Professor) and Dr Sally Staton (DECRA Senior Research Fellow).

• Understanding the factors that impact students’ transition from primary to secondary schooling using a comprehensive Queensland State School student-level education database. This database has been built by our team for the Queensland Department of Education, and includes non-identifiable student-level data, covering demographic characteristics, school enrolment, parental education and occupation, and educational outcomes relating to school attendance, absence reasons, report card results, classroom behaviour scores, subject effort scores, and NAPLAN results from 2007 to 2019.
• Understanding the role that a choice in incentive (i.e. choice architecture) plays in increasing participation in a research study. As part of the Sleep Transitions and Regularity Study (STARs) – Queensland Brain Institute – University of Queensland, parents/carers were given a choice to either donate their participation incentive to a cause or retain the incentive for themselves at every data collection point. Analysis would include understanding the association between choice of incentive and participant retention.

Honours Supervision 2023

I am excited to take on 1 student in the individual honours stream in 2023. 

My research is in applied social and cognitive psychology and I'm broadly interested in the role of evidence in jury decision-making. How do jurors and other legal decision-makers understand forensic evidence? How can we improve their understanding? How should forensic experts (e.g., fingerprint examiners) testify about their decisions and expertise in a way that will enable jurors to understand and evaluate the evidence appropriately? You can find some of my past work on these topics here. 

I am also currently working with Professors Blake McKimmie and Barbara Masser on a training project with Queensland Police Service in the area of gendered violence. I am interested in exploring the role of contextual relationship evidence (for an overview, see: Tidmarsh, Powell, & Darwinkel, 2012) in helping jurors to understand the complexities of gendered violence offending and overcome common stereotypes. If you are interested in this topic and in potentially gaining experience working with industry, there may be some opportunity to engage with our collaborators at Queensland Police Service during project development.

These topics would definitely suit someone who enjoyed PSYC2371 (The Science of Everyday Thinking), PSYC3052 (Judgment and Decision-Making), or PSYC2371 (The Psychology of Criminal Justice). 

I strive to create a safe environment for my supervisees to learn, challenge themselves, and test out new ideas. There will be opportunities to be part of a supportive lab environment with other supervisors and honours students in either (or both!) of: the Cognition Collective lab (Professor Jason Tangen's lab) and the Applied Social Psychology Lab (Professor Blake McKimmie and Barbara Masser's lab).

I will be attending the supervisor meet and greet on Friday the 20th January from 1.00-2.30pm so will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have about my background, future research projects, supervision style, or anything else. If you are unable to make the meet and greet, please feel free to email me with any questions you may have.

Research Experience (PSYC2991/PSYC2992)

I am able to supervise 1 student in Semester 1, 2023 and/or Semester 2, 2023. Take a look at the PSYC2991 and PSYC2992 course profiles to get a sense of the work required. Projects for students to work on are similar to those listed above, as well as data collection for large-scale replication studies as part of the Psychological Science Accelerator project (dependent on timing). 

I am a clinical neuropsychologist with an academic joint School of Psychology and Queensland Brain Institute appointment. My group in the Neuropsychology Research Unit investigates both theoretical questions about cognitive processes and clinical questions about assessment of cognition in neuorlogical disorders.

Honours projects in 2022 will be focused on these two areas:

1. Cognitive projects focus on the interface between executive functions and language expression, for example, adderessing questions like 'How do think of something to say and then produce your idea aloud?'

2. Clinical projects focus on cognitive test development and validation. For example, the Brief Executive Lanaguage Screen (BELS) has been developed and is currently being validated in acute stroke and dementia. 

You can find out more about me and my group at: https://qbi.uq.edu.au/robinsongroup

If you are intersted in working with me for your Honours project then please email me asap: gail.robinson@uq.edu.au

I am a postdoctoral research fellow working in Professor Derek Arnold’s Perception Lab. I will be supervising 1 (research stream) honours student in 2023 and have a few project ideas ready to go. Your project will most likely be related to time perception, visual predictions, and sensitivity to visual sensations.

One line of research that I have been working on for the past 6 years concerns the conditions that lead to distortions in the apparent duration of short (sub-second) visual events. There are several questions we need an answer to help us understand how these distortions occur, such as:

• Do we get more visual information from events that seem longer?
• Is it possible to change the shortest interval of time that an individual can discern?

No required skills. A student interested in cognitive/sensory neuroscience and/or psychophysics research would benefit from completing this honours project. You will get a chance to learn a lot of the skills required in these research areas, which would be beneficial if you have your sights set on a PhD program. There is scope to expand the project using EEG, if the data leads us to a question that requires a neural measure. 

Shoot me an email if you have any questions. Happy to meet up for a quick chat sometime before you submit your preferences too. 

I am Senior Lecturer in Clinical Geropsychology, my area of research expertise primarily addresses topics related to ageing and dementia.

I have opportunities for honours students to pursue interests in dementia research that do not involve collecting data from participants with dementia. For example driving disruptions have significant impact on people living with dementia, their care partners and family members. Honours projects might include exploring data related to participants' transport alternatives to driving or participants' mobility and lifestyle related goal setting after driving cessation.

Another project focus might involve exploring topics related to ageism and stigma, or myths and misunderstandings around dementia, or nature connection and wellbeing with an undergraduate student sample.

My UQ Researcher Profile lists some publications of interest around these topics, including previous Honours projects: http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/11436

As an Honours supervisor, I am interested in negotiating a suitable project topic with motivated students around these ideas. I provide early guidance, scaffolded support, and I like to set ongoing, achievable goals to help students meet submission time frames.

Some of my current projects suitable for Honours students are on the following topics:

• How people resist injustice in everyday life 
• Majority and minority views of racial equality over time
• Experiences of discrimination and collection action for social change
• Diversity and bias within psychological science
• Evaluations of scientists from underrepresented backgrounds

If any of this sounds interesting to you, please email me and we can schedule a time to chat!

My research investigates the basic mechanisms underlying associative learning, memory, and decision-making. I have a broad interest in understanding factors that affect choice behavior. My work typically involves a combination of experimental and cognitive modeling techniques to address these issues.

In 2023, I am interested in supervising Honors projects on the following topics:

Optimism and Uncertain Decisions

Many outcomes in life come with some amount of uncertainty. The same process can produce a range of outcomes on different occasions. Following the same recipe can produce an outstanding meal, but sometimes the end-result will be lacking. This project investigates the relationship between dispositional optimism---the tendency to believe that things will work out well---and how people respond to outcomes with uncertainty. How accurately do people track the likelihood of "good outcomes" and does optimism predict how frequently one will accept a mediocre outcome versus trying for a better result?

Decision Quality in Context

The choices an individual makes does not always have a clear effect on outcomes. Daily life is replete with examples where good outcomes arise regardless of the choices one makes ("there were no wrong choices"). The converse is also true when bad outcomes are unavoidable ("there were no good options"). These cases can be contrasted with others where the choices one makes are absolutely relevant. A difficulty in learning how to make good decisions is to recognize when one's decisions are more or less consequential. This project  uses a prediction task to investigate how the overarching outcome context---whether outcomes tend to be good or bad---affects people's perception of one's decision performance (e.g., as better or worse than expected).

Partnered Decision-Making: Learning When to Seek a Second Opinion

Having independent decision-makers reach the same conclusion is a common way to instill confidence in a decision. In matters of public policy, multiple experts are often sought to validate choices and pursue a consensus correct course of action. Inevitably though, decision-makers will sometimes disagree. How are such disagreements resolved? For example, is one more likely to defer to the another's judgment if they are generally more accurate, faster in their decision-making, or both? This project uses a simple learning task to investigate the likelihood that people will defer to another person when making predictions about novel stimuli based on earlier learned experience.

General areas of interest: cognitive development in infancy and early childhood; theory of mind and early social development; development of knowledge about the human body; development of biological concepts; early numerical knowledge.

My preference is to negotiate with students about the project they wish to undertake in Honours.  We normally spend the first few weeks discussing mutual interests, before settling on a topic. 

Most of my Honours students do developmental research, recruiting and testing infants and/or children through the Early Cognitive Development Centre or via local daycare centres and schools.  Contrary to rumour, it is not especially difficult or otherwise disadvantagous to carry out a developmental project, as we have excellent systems in place to ensure that students can recruit a good-sized sample within the Honours timeframe.

This honours project will be co-supervised by Professor Karen Thorpe and Dr Sally Staton.

Professor Karen Thorpe is an Australian Laurate Fellow and Dr Sally Staton is a DECRA Senior Research Fellow in Development Psychology based at the Queensland Brain Institute, UQ.  Karen and Sally lead a multi-disciplinary team of developmental scientists, undertaking large scale longitudinal and natural-experimental studies with embedded studies to understand the mechanisms that enable or limit children's life chances. Karen and Sally work with their students to design projects that are embedded within current large-scale project being undertaken by their team, providing a unique opportunity to experience working in a large, multidisciplinary, research-focused environment.

This honours project would be specifically focused on understanding children’s transitions to and across early education and care environments and the implications for child-carer attachments, behaviour, and sleep patterns.

The moderating role of self-compassion in the relationship between ASD symptoms, depression anxiety and stress.

The work being undertaken in 2022 will involve a cross-sectional, correlational study via Qualtrics. The projects will be conducted in collaboration with Dr Marcela Matos at University of Coimbra, Portugal, who has carried out previous research in this area.

I am interested in taking one honours students in 2022. I would like to invite students with an interest in clinical psychology to apply. I am a clinical psychologist in private practice, and as such may need to meet the student sometimes at my offices, either in Morningside or Newmarket, however, I will be available to come to UQ on some Mondays. Hopefully we will be able to have joint supervision sessions via Zoom with Dr Matos at times throughout the year, especially for advice regarding statistical analyses. If you have any queries, please feel free to contact me by email.

My expertise spans cognition and addiction research. Within the cognitive domain my work has focused on understanding emotion processing more broadly, with a focus on fear learning, utilising cognitive behavioural paradigms, functional brain imaging and psychophysiology. Within addiction I am interested in how alcohol, cannabis and tobacco are used, how their use trends change over time and as a result of regulatory behaviour, and how these substances affect behaviour and cognitive processes. I am also interested in understanding how addictive processes may form for behaviours such as video game play and gambling.

I have the following research projects planned for 2023 that honours students could participate in or lead:

• Understanding how young people interact with zero-alcohol (<.5%) drinks. These beverages are new and there is very little we know about their consumption might impact on behaviour, perceptions and attitudes. You can help fill this gap!
• Last year I was part of a team that ran the International Gaming Study 2022 (IGS22). The IGS22 is a large multinational study of people who play video games regularly, seeking to understand the risk factors and protective factors that might be involved in the development of gaming disorder. The honours project would be using this data to develop questions that could then be tested by new data collected as part of the honours year.
• Time spent on social media continues to grow, especially among young people. At the same time, social media is less stringently regulated than traditional media, potentially exposing young people and young adults to alcohol and other substance advertising and promotion. This honours project would work as part of a larger study looking to understand how exposure of young people to alcohol (and other substance use) advertising and promotion on social media may influence socio-cognitive factors such as attitudes and perceptions.

Cognitive development, Animal Cognition, Evolutionary Psychology

Research interests as described in PSYC3262: Evolutionary Approaches to Human Behaviour

I am supervising projects examining young children's emerging foresight (e.g. their capacity to anticipate what could possibly go wrong). I also study cognitive capacities in non-human primates. 

Different areas of psychology operate at different levels of analysis. For example, neuroscience is based in biology (e.g., molecules, neurons, blood flow) while social psychology is based on group-level phenomena (e.g., attitudes, prejudice, leadership). Clearly, some levels of analysis are more appropriate for addressing particular challenges than others. As cognitive scientists, we think about thinking. We examine mental processes such as learning, memory, perception, attention, insight, language, reasoning, bias, problem-solving, and decision-making. We investigate these cognitive phenomena using experiments, simulations, and behavioural measures, and rely on a variety of analytical methods and statistical techniques to understand how the mind works without needing to directly observe mental processes. The cognitive scientific approach allows us to distinguish between what people ‘say’ they remember and what they remember, whether people ‘think’ they are biased and whether they are biased, or whether (mis)information that ‘feels’ genuine is in fact true. Visit my lab page below for some general themes that have emerged in our research over the years as well as a list of students and projects that I have supervised in the past.

For more information, visit tangenlab.com

My interests cut across a number of fields but I am broadly interested in face perception and social neuroscience. My previous research has used a variety of different techniques including behaviour (psychophysics), eye-tracking, neuroimaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and single unit recordings. See http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/32114 for more information. 

In 2023 I will be supervising honours projects on the following topics: 

(1) The perception of face pareidolia. 

'Face pareidolia' is the illusion of facial structure on an otherwise inanimate object (such as a green pepper or the moon) - these illusory faces falsely activate the dedicated face-selective regions in our brain. But how does this brain activity influence our behaviour? Does everyone experience face pareidolia? Do machines that are trained to detect faces also "see" face pareidolia?

(2) Faces in the wild: Understanding the communication of emotions in the real world

Reading the facial expressions of the people around us is a computationally daunting task and one of the brain’s greatest accomplishments. However, our current theories of expression recognition have been informed by studies that have used very small sets of photographs taken of people posing in sterile environments (i.e., in the absence of a stimulus or other audience members). This arm of my research constitutes a response to the limitations of previous research by investigating how we read and recognise naturalistic facial expressions that occur in the real world. 

(3) Plasticity in the face processing system. 

Although numerous studies have demonstrated that primates have a dedicated network of brain regions for processing face stimuli, we do not yet understand what visual properties drive activity in these regions. I am particularly interested in understanding whether pet ownership or extensive experience working with animals predicts broader tuning. 

You will receive all the necessary training in the relevant behavioural and/or neuroimaging techniques. If you are interested in working with me for your honours project in 2023, please get in touch via email as soon as possible: j.taubert@uq.edu.au. I am especially interested in hearing from students who are thinking about a career in social neuroscience. 

I am the Curriculum Development Leader at the Parenting and Family Support Centre. I am also a registered Clinical Psychologist. 

My current research is in the field of parenting and family, and specifically with the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program. My research has included intervention research on Triple P programs and factors related to delivery of Triple P by trained practitioners. My honours project in 2023 will likely be looking at real-world effectiveness of Triple P programs using large international datasets.

I will be taking one Honours student in 2023.

My research interests are in the areas of intergroup relations, interpersonal relationships, and attraction.

Students working with me can choose to work on the following research questions or pitch one of their own!

• What factors bolster the perceived national identity of racial minority group members who are stereotyped to be perpetual foreigners  (e.g. Asian Australians)?
• How does intragroup and intergroup contact predict intragroup and intergroup attraction?
• How do people perceive racial preferences in attraction?
• How do people perceive minority allies relative to majority allies?
• What factors affect perceptions of allies in social movements?
• How are minority group members perceived when they interact with prejudiced majority group members?
• What are the effects of non-forgiveness after interpersonal wrongdoings?
• What are the effects of past histories of wrongdoing on responses to present wrongdoings?

My research aims to improve the accuracy of forensic science procedures that identify people and convict them of crimes. I focus primarily on face identification where staff must verify the identity of an unfamiliar person, such as in a criminal investigation, at border control, or in an anti-terrorism surveillance operation. This work involves developing evidence-based training, comparison methods, and recruitment tools, understanding what drives expertise in face identification, and optimising how humans and facial recognition technology work together to identify people. I also do some research in other forensic science disciplines.

I will be supervising 3 honours students in 2023, and have the following projects available:

1) How accurate is face identification in a live police surveillance scenario?
2) What are the cognitive mechanisms underlying expertise in face identification?
3) What are the diagnostic features of bloodstain pattern analysis?

Please get in touch if you would like to chat about these projects in more detail: a.towler@uq.edu.au.

I will be supervising three honours students in 2023.

In the UQ Social Neuroscience Lab, we use various psychophysiological measures to examine emotional and cognitive processes involved in social interactions.  Although informed by recent findings in neuroimaging, honours projects are typically done without people being put into an fMRI scanner.  To heighten experimental realism, the laboratory has available interactive software programs so that participants become highly involved in the experimental procedures.  Recent studies conducted by students in the lab have examined the effects of being the source or target of ostracism, implicit prejudice and discrimination, trust and motor mimicry, event-related potentials, empathy, and Facebook use. Specific topics for 2023 will likely centre on empathy and group identification. This might involve reactions people have to social media and robots. Honours students are required to attend weekly lab meetings with my PhD students and other research assistants and have individual supervision appointments. 

What about my honours supervision style? I realise that most new honours students are undertaking their first big research project, so early on, I try to help them develop a realistic schedule with a set of goals that we assess at our weekly individual meetings. It will be essential to have your study planned well enough, including your proposed analyses, so we can pre-register your study before data collection begins. Once data collection has begun, we will meet individually less often until it's time to analyse the data. By the end of the year, I hope my students feel they can work more independently. I also like to improve students' writing skills whenever possible, so some of our lab meetings will also cover those skills. To this end, each student must have a copy of the APA publication manual! 

Please be sure to contact me if you have any questions or would like to meet in person before you choose your supervision preferences.

Cheers,

Eric

About me

I trained as an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist in Belgium and the Netherlands, and years later, now living in Australia, re-invented myself as an environmental psychologist, after many stints volunteering for hands-on community-based conservation projects, and studying another master's degree in Conservation Science in 2016. I am a senior research fellow working with Kelly Fielding at the School of Communication and Arts. I generally work remotely - I live in Fremantle, WA and will only be on campus sporadically. I have supervised quite a few students remotely (some of my students are in London!), so I know this can work well. When I am on campus, I make it a priority to meet up with students.

Research topics

My current research focuses on two linked questions, (a) what are the mental health and well-being impacts of climate and environmental change, especially in particularly vulnerable populations such as young people or people working in conservation/environmental protection (among other groups); and (b) under what conditions does anxiety about climate change (climate distress/eco-anxiety) drive engagement in pro-environmental behaviours and/or climate action?

I also have an interest in "connection with nature", and the role of mindfulness in this context. 

The types of studies could include online surveys, experimental designs (conducted online, in a lab setting or in the field), face-to-face interviews or focus groups, social media content analyses, among others.

Please contact me for further information, or have a look at some of my published research on these topics, e.g.

Psychological responses, mental health, and sense of agency for the dual challenges of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic in young people in the UK: an online survey study

Understanding citizen scientists’ willingness to invest in, and advocate for, conservation

Practice Matters: Pro-environmental Motivations and Diet-Related Impact Vary With Meditation Experience

The application of wearable technology to quantify health and wellbeing co-benefits from urban wetlands

What is my supervision style?

I am approachable and open-minded. The goal of the honours project is to gain experience running your first research project with some independence, so my aim is to support you in that. I expect students to take ownership of their project and to be proactive. My role is to guide and mentor you. When you're enthusiastic about the project, I will be, too. This process should be fun and challenging at the same time. Feel free to pitch your own idea, but we can also work on developing something together. 

I am offering two seperate Honours projects in 2022, each examining a different aspect of multisensory perception using psychophsical methods.

Perception is multisensory, and the separate sensory modalities interact and integrate to create a coherent, unified perceptual experience. Multisensory perception enhances our ability to understand our environment and enables us to better interact with our surroundings. First, the different sensory modalities have different fields of operation (up close for touch and taste, while vision and hearing can tell you about things in the distance) and they can substitute for one another when individually comprised (you can still hear in the dark). By combining information about the world from multiple sensory cues, our brains can create novel, more complex representations like flavour, and resolve perceptual ambiguities since two different objects that may look similar, may sound totally different. Importantly, combining information from multiple sensory cues improves both the detection and discrimination of stimuli.

The first project will look at the effect of crossmodal correspondances (CMCs) on the cueing of visual spatial attention. In particular, whether the lightness/pitch CMC can act as an exogenous attentional cue. This project will involve a few experiments developed and run using Matlab, and presented on a standard PC. Participants will make speeded responses to cued visual targets and reaction times across a number of experimental conditions will be compared. 

The second project will also look at reaction times to targets. The redundant targets effect describes the observation that participants are faster to respond to stimuli in one modality if the stimulus is paired with another stimulus in a different modality. This project will investigate if stimulus value influences multisensory integration in humans by examining the effect of reward on the RTE. This project will also involve a few experiments developed and run using Matlab, and presented on a standard PC. Participants will make speeded responses to audio-visual targets and reaction times across a number of experimental conditions will be compared. 

Please email me if you would like detailed project descriptions.

I’m interested in mate preferences and choices, physical attractiveness, intelligence, humour, personality, sexual orientation, masculinity-femininity, sexual behaviour, and how these relate to sexual selection and the evolution of the human mind.

My work examines social psychological theories in applied settings such as the workplace. This year (2023) students working with me will conduct a research project on stereotype threat, which is the concern that one is the target of demeaning stereotypes. Stereotype threat can undermine motivation and lead to acute performance deficits. My research has focused on factors that lead to feelings of stereotype threat in the workplace, the different ways that people cope with these feelings, and the consequences for people who feel stereotyped at work. I have examined stereotype threat among women in male dominated professions, older employees, and men in female dominated professions.

I will be overseas during the meet and greet and thus will not be able to attend. Here are some common questions I receive and their answers:

• "Do I have to come up with my own idea?"

I do not expect students to come up with their own project (though you are welcome to do so). Rather, we will work together to design a project that takes advantage of my expertise that is of interest to you.

• "What is your supervisory style?"

This is a tough question to answer, so I asked some former students and here's what they said...

“Courtney is people/relationship oriented. She is very approachable (so I don’t feel like anyone would have worries about asking questions) but also students have to be proactive in keeping to the deadlines that she gives if they want to do well”

"Courtney has high expectations for her students and expects them to be self motivated and to meet regular deadlines”

"Courtney teaches the practical skills (ethics forms, creating a timeline for research and data collection, recruiting participants, survey prep etc.). She will help you set a timeline and provide you with all the information you need - from writing your research question to writing your conclusion."