InPsych 6 - September 2016

ISSUE6

INPSYCH PSYCHOLOGY NEWS, STORIES AND EVENTS

WELCOME

Hello! Welcome to the sixth edition of the InPsych Newsletter!

In this September 2016 Newsletter we have lots of updates from the staff and students from Psychology Department at Staffordshire University. Whether you’re a current student, a graduate, or reading this at an Open Day, we hope you enjoy this edition!

We were pleased to see some excellent scores on this year’s National Student Survey, a UK-wide survey of students’ experiences at university. We were particularly pleased with the

OVERALL SATISFACTION SCORE Firstly, we would like to wish our Graduating Class of 2016 all the best in their future careers!

We had a wonderful time at the Summer Graduation Ceremony celebrating our graduates’ achievements at the beautiful Trentham Estate a short hop from our Stoke-on-Trent City Campus. See Page 4 for a selection of photographs from a very special day!

for our BSc (Hons) Psychology and Counselling and the high scores for our Learning Resources, Teaching Quality and how our ‘staff are good at explaining things’ responses for our courses!

We are also excited to be relaunching our ‘Staffordshire Centre for Psychological Research’, home to our research activities in the department. We have a long history of high quality research, particularly in Health Psychology but also in other areas including Mental Health, Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, all of which we use to inform our teaching. Our

We’re very excited to announce that our Professor of Psychological Research Methods, Prof. David Clark-Carter, is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Psychological Society for his work in teaching statistics and research methods to thousands of students, professionals and researchers over his years at Staffordshire University. This is a well deserved recognition of David’s achievements, success and training of new generations of psychologists, and the Psychology Department were overjoyed to hear that David had won this award!

Judy David Academic Group Lead (Undergraduate Psychology)

relaunched Centre has a strong focus on conducting socially relevant research which has a positive impact on psychological health and wellbeing. We’ve relaunched the Centre’s website, created a new video showing our research facilities, and are busy organising a range of research-related events including our regular Visiting Speaker Series and Psychology in the Pub talks. For more details please visit our website via: tinyurl.com/StaffsPsyRes Speaking of research, we were very pleased to host our Annual Psychology Student Conference featuring lots of great talks and poster presentations by our (now graduated!)

Final Year Students. We heard about our students’ Final Year Research Projects, a culmination of three years’ hard work, including fascinating studies on topics ranging from false memories, experiences of positive body image, changing mental health stigma via fact-based information interventions, and the effects of hypnosis and physical activity on the stress response! You can read more about the Conference on Page 3.

Whether you’re a current or a prospective student, we hope to see you soon at one of our free Psychology talks, community events, Open Days, or perhaps at our Coffee Lab Café in the Science Centre!

In the meantime, keep in touch with the latest developments from the students and staff at the Psychology Department via our Twitter feed (@ StaffsPsych) and our blog (blogs.staffs.ac.uk/ inpsych).

Dr Erica Lucas

Prof. Marc Jones

Academic Group Lead (Psychology Postgraduate and Partnerships)

Head of the School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise

INPSYCH

The Psychology behind the ‘Adele illusion’ Dr Andrew Edmonds, Lecturer in Psychology and Face Perception researcher, explains the psychology behind the “Adele Illusion” a popular social media meme from earlier in 2016. You may have already heard Dr Edmonds’ interview on BBC Radio Stoke, here he explains how the “Adele Illusion” works (have a look at the two pictures of Adele below):

The same picture of Adele just turned the right way up!

You may by now have seen Adele as you’ve never seen her before – with her eyes and mouth upside down! Even the biggest admirers of her work would probably agree that this makes her face look a bit distorted. However, turning the whole image upside down makes this disappear.

This is a modern version of the Margaret Thatcher illusion, first discovered in 1980 by Peter Thompson.

So what is going on here? It is thought (e.g. Edmonds & Lewis, 2007; Thompson, 1980) that inverting the eyes and mouth of a face disrupts information about the spatial relationship between the features of a face (broadly termed ‘configural information’). Research has shown that this configural information is unavailable to us when a whole face is turned upside down.

Professor David Clark-Carter wins BPS Lifetime Achievement Award!

Professor David Clark-Carter will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Psychological Society for his contributions to teaching and research methods nationally and internationally.

David has worked at Staffordshire University since 1989 and is currently the Professor of Psychological Research Methods. Throughout this time David has inspired generations of students and his seminal text Quantitative Psychological Research: the Complete Student’s Companion is popular across many institutions.

From the development of a half degree in psychology on a Modern Studies course, through to the first ever BPS accredited Professional Doctorate in Health Psychology and MSc in Health Psychology, David has been central to course and programme development at Staffordshire University’s Centre for Health Psychology.

Dr Amy Burton, Course Director for the MSc in Health Psychology, was part of the team who

nominated David. She commented: “Having studied both my BSc and MSc at Staffordshire University I have experienced first-hand David’s approach to supporting and educating students. It is a pleasure to work alongside David on our MSc and Professional Doctorate Health Psychology courses and see our students benefit from the inspiration and support I valued in my own student journey.”

Judy David, Academic Group Leader for Undergraduate Psychology Programmes, added: “David’s influence with psychological research methods education runs to literally thousands of researchers, academics, students and professionals, in the field of Psychology. His influence on Psychology as a Science cannot be overstated; he has shaped the discipline as

So, if configural information is unavailable to us, and it is the disturbance of this information which produces the weird appearance in the upright Adele face (with the eyes and mouth inverted), then this may explain why the upturned features disappear when we turn the face upside down! However, more recent research suggests that the illusion may actually be due to a reduced sensitivity to inverted facial features (e.g. Psalta, Young, Thompson and Andrews, 2014).

Whatever the explanation, illusions such as this are more than just a bit of fun – they have helped psychologists to identify the sorts of processes that are involved in ‘normal’ upright face processing. It is thought, for example, that we use configural information for the processing of familiar faces but not when processing those which are unfamiliar to us. This is just one of the many differences between familiar and unfamiliar faces which I am interested in understanding in my own research, as well as the question of how faces become familiar to us over time.

a whole. We are so proud to have him on our team here at Staffordshire.”

Outside of the University David has also provided quality assurance for the BPS Accredited Qualifications, contributing to syllabus design and acting as Chief Examiner for BPS Qualifying Examination Research Methods module.

On accepting the award, David said: “My approach to education has always been to try to empower the next generation of psychologists so that they feel they can use their subject to solve problems involving humans, regardless of the domain. This notion has guided my approach to public engagement in that I try to show how psychology can address everyday issues from its unique perspective.”

SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY, SPORT AND EXERCISE

Final Year Students Present their Research at the Third Annual Staffordshire Psychology Student Conference!

Dr Robert Dempsey and Dr Louise Humphreys, Lecturers in Psychology, report on a very successful event featuring a range of talks by current third year students about their final year research projects: We were very pleased to host the Third Annual Psychology Student Conference in March 2016. The Conference featured a range of talks and poster presentations by current Final Year Psychology Students and was well attended by current first, second and third year students, postgraduate research students, academic staff and invited guests from across Staffordshire University.

The students presented research using a variety of psychological methodologies and included presentations on diverse topics such as “Experiences of positive body image in women with a BMI above 25”, “The effects of cooperative gaming vs competitive gaming on spontaneous helping behaviour”, “The Effect of Fact vs. Myth-Based Interventions on Mental Health-Related Stigmatising Attitudes”, and “The effects of physical activity and hypnosis on physiological stress response and psychomotor performance”.

All our students did a fantastic job of presenting their research and presented in a confident, professional and engaging manner.

Stoke Psychology in the Pub returns in October 2016!

Student Awards Ceremony The Conference was also followed by a Student Awards Ceremony where we acknowledged the contributions of our student presenters and also gave out prizes for Best Performance at each level of study, plus two student-nominated awards for Best Teamwork and Unsung Student (recognising a student who makes a valuable contribution to student life at Staffordshire).

The Stoke Psychology in the Pub series, jointly organised by the Psychology Department and the British Psychological Society’s West Midlands Branch, restarts on the 5th October.

Upcoming talk dates include:

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Kondwa Thawethe won the Best Poster Prize for her poster titled: The effect of music listening on cold pressor pain perception and tolerance.

Talks are hosted by the Glebe Pub, Glebe Street, Stoke-on-Trent, only a short walk away from the University’s Stoke-on-Trent City Campus.

Professor Allan Howells, Deputy ViceChancellor at Staffordshire University, presented the awards and raised the students for their hard-work and their confidence in presenting their research in front of a large audience.

Staff attending the conference also voted for the Best Student Talk and Best Student Poster Presentation. We were extremely impressed with the overall quality of the students’ presentations and the hard work they had obviously placed into their final year research project. The two winners of the Best Talk and Poster prizes were:

Wednesday 5th October 2016 Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Wednesday 7th December 2016 Wednesday 1st February 2017 Wednesday 1st March 2017

For more details about the Speakers and Talks, including direction to The Glebe, please visit our website tinyurl.com/PitPStoke

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Paige Johns won the Best Talk for her oral presentation titled: The effect of different presentation modes and levels of negative arousal on an individual’s susceptibility to developing false memories.

ISSUE6

Congratulations to the

Graduating Class of 2016 We held our Annual Graduation Ceremony at the beautiful Trentham Estate in July 2016. See below for a gallery for images of our Graduating Class of 2016 and our staff enjoying a fine day to celebrate our students’ successes!

GET TH THAT HAT STAFFORDSHIRE GRADUATE EDGE! COMING SOON! A free online course for recent Staffordshire University Graduates from the School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise launches in November 2016.

Boost your employability skills and career with this FREE online graduate course where you’ll have access to: Video recordings of 12 lectures

Open Days are a great way to find out more about the courses you are interested in and to see what university life will be like.

Come and see us at one of our Undergraduate Open Days: Saturday 16th October 2016 and Saturday 26th November 2016

Follow @StaffsPsych

For the latest news, exciting research updates and events taking place in the Psychology department at Staffordshire University Visit our blog:

Blogs.staffs.ac.uk/inpsych

Interactive activities Reading lists Wikis and discussion boards Online tutor support Postgraduate credits following a final assessment

For further information about the award please contact: joanne.lloyd@staffs.ac.uk

Want to find out more about our Psychology degrees?

Scan the QR code below for more details! http://bit.ly/SUPsycourses

M8002

OPEN DAY DATES

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