PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT · Web viewChild development, especially cognitive and language development, categorisation and the question of how language and categorisation interact. HANNAH

SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY FURTHER INFORMATION

The School of Psychology has been based at the Lincoln campus since 1997 and is located on the main Brayford site beside the canal, below the Cathedral. The School has grown over the past five years and comprises 30 full time teaching staff plus technical and administrative staff. Staff offices are in Bridge House with dedicated Psychology Labs in the Main Building. In recent years the School has invested in state of the art research equipment and facilities including observation suites, EEG and TMS equipment, several eye tracking systems and a Baby Lab. The School is administered through the Faculty Office (Faculty of Health, Life and Social Science). It is a thriving, friendly department, with a strong commitment to research and embedding research within undergraduate and post-graduate teaching.

_________________________School of Psychology 2012

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Head of School: Professor Harriet Gross 01522 886064 [email protected]


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mailto:[email protected]

RESEARCH

There are four research groups in the School and all staff are involved in one or more of these groups.

Evolution & Development Staff in this group study cognitive, language, social and motor development in

infants and children, with additional research areas of child safety, development of trust, vision, memory, attention and social behaviour and cognition of primates. Research carried out by this group involves interdisciplinary approaches and our methods include for example Intermodal Preferential Looking, Preferential Listening, Habituation, Infant and Child Eye-tracking, Motor Studies as well as Educational Safety Training, Acting-Out and Elicitation methods, Interviews, Assessments and Observation techniques.

Key Staff: Dr Kerstin Meints, Dr Bino Majolo, Dr Karen Pfeffer, Dr Lesley Allinson, Dr Kirsty Miller, Dr Emile van der Zee, Dr Fenja Ziegler

Perception, Action and Cognition focusing on the structures and processes underlying visual perception and

attention. Past research has included, for example, comparative face perception, inhibition of return and neuropsychological conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy. Other cognitively oriented work concerns linguistic structures and language processing, the impact of emotion on memory and social cognition, sleep and cognition.

Key Staff: Prof. Tim Hodgson, Prof George Mather, Dr Kun Guo, Dr Petra Pollux, Dr Patrick Bourke, Dr Simon Durrant, Dr Susan Chipchase, Dr Julie Baldwin, Dr Paul Goddard, Dr John Hudson, Dr Jon Slack, Dr Garry Wilson

Forensic and Clinical Psychology concerned with aspects of psychological functioning related to clinical and

forensic problems. Most of the research is focused in applied settings and on clinical or forensic populations. This includes studying individuals in the community, special groups in hospital or clinical settings, as well as offenders both in and out of institutions. Research undertaken concerns staff, the environmental context or the individual, using a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

Key Staff: Prof Todd Hogue, Dr Roger Bretherton, Dr Lynsey Gozna, Ms Hannah Merdian, Dr David Dawson, Dr Aidan Hart, Dr Mark Gresswell, Dr Adrian Parke

Identity and Psychologies focusing on social and discursive constructions of identities, in particular,

emerging adulthood, pregnancy and motherhood, ageing; in addition staff are interested in the effects of environment and physical changes on public perception of risk, the role of the environment in ageing identity, and in attitudes to terrorism. Members of the group have differing backgrounds in psychology, e.g. developmental, social, critical; they use primarily qualitative methods, but their research is not focused on a single approach.

Key staff: Dr Lorraine Bowman- Grieve, Dr Rachel Bromnick, Prof Harriet Gross, Dr Ava Horowitz, Dr Patrick Hylton, Dr Jamie Wardman

The research groups provide both the focus for research and the formal mechanism for managing the School’s research objectives and resources. The groups also reflect the individual areas of expertise of the School staff (see below). Postgraduate students are also linked to research groups. All of the research groupings have


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extensive national and international connections and collaborative projects. Staff may have interests that span several groups and there currently two research themes that bring together staff with from across the School and elsewhere in collaborative research and teaching activities: Risk and Animal Cognition. Risk: coordinated by Jamie Wardman, bringing together projects across the School on child safety, terrorism, forensic risk assessments, gambling, technology and sustainable development. Jamie is also an editor of the Journal of Risk ResearchAnimal Cognition . Members of the developmental and cognitive groups undertake a range of research across species, particularly dogs. Staff involved include Emile an der Zee, Kun Guo and Bino Majolo. In addition, Bino Majolo runs a fieldsite in Morocco, (http://barbarymacaque.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/) which supports a number of researchers and postgraduate students.

In RAE 2008 25% of our research was rated as internationally excellent /world leading and 45% was considered of national importance. Since then our research activities and outputs have grown with the addition of new staff.

Research Support and Facilities:

Research within the School is supported by three technical staff with backgrounds in the development of experimental interface equipment and hardware/software expertise. Audio-visual and multimedia technicians are also available in other schools to support and assist with research activities. In addition, there is a Faculty research administrator.

The School offers specialist teaching and research laboratory accommodation and facilities currently located on Level 2 of the Main Academic Building on the Brayford Campus. The facilities include:

2 Psychology I.T. Teaching laboratories each with 25 workstations

Observation Suite; Video/audio recordingPsychology laboratory and networked experimental cubicles

BabyLab facility for work with babies and infants; Projection facilities for preferential looking/listening paradigms

Eyetracker laboratory housing a generation 5.5 Punkinji eyetracker plus control system; Tobii portable and head-mounted eye trackers

Psychophysiology laboratories with EEG/ERP recorders and TMS system; sleep lab

7 general-purpose research/teaching laboratories with fully networked facilities and running specialist experimental an analytical software programmes


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http://barbarymacaque.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/

An electronic, part mechanical, workshops – fully equipped for building interface equipmentAn extensive psychological tests library

The Lincoln Babylab – Managed by Dr Kerstin Meints

Research in the Lincoln Babylab concentrates on different areas of categorisation and conceptual development as well as speech perception and language acquisition, especially word learning and early grammar. By investigating infants' early categorisation behaviour and their early linguistic capabilities we hope to gain more knowledge about how babies categorise the world, how their conceptual development grows and about how language evolves from earliest speech perception up to full-blown grammars. The key investigative methods used are preferential looking and preferential listening.

TMS Lab – Managed by Dr Patrick Bourke

Our TMS lab is equipped with a Medtronic MagPro X100, a high performance magnetic stimulator that is used in conjunction with a Zebris guidance system to allow the cross-referencing of participants real heads and their 3D brain reconstructions from MRI images created with BrainVoyager. We use TMS in Lincoln with healthy adults to study cognitive processing, particularly visual attention.


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Eyetracker Labs – Managed by Dr Kun Guo and othersThe School of Psychology owns a range of high-speed eye trackers, such as Fourward Technologies Generation 5.5 Dual Purkinje Image eye-tracker, ViSaGe 250Hz Video Eyetracker Toolbox, Tobii portable and head-mounted eye trackers. The non-invasive eye-tracking protocol provides accurate online measurement in our research activities such as reading, driving, infants development, attention, face and object recognition, and animal cognition. We also have sensecams and portable eyetrackers.The lab has full technical and software support provided by the School’s technicians and experimental officer.

EEG/ERP Lab – Managed by Dr Petra PolluxThe EEG/ERP lab is equipped with a 64 and 16 channel ActiveTwo EEG set-up (Biosemi Amsterdam) for recording brain activity at the scalp, and BrainVision Analyzer for analysis of EEG recordings. The equipment is situated within an electrically shielded room (European EMC Products Ltd).The equipment is currently used in research investigating visual perception and attention.


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PSYCHOLOGY STAFF – Research Interests

LESLEY ALLINSON - Cognitive deficits in autism and related disorders; human computer interaction; virtual environments for teaching and learning.

JULIE BALDWIN - aspects of selective attention; visual search; inhibitory mechanisms in motion displays,

PATRICK BOURKE - General attentional limits; Dual task performance; Effects of attentional loads on perceptual representations; Visuo-spatial attention in depth space.

LORRAINE BOWMAN-GRIEVE- Psychology of terrorism and political violence

ROGER BRETHERTON - Positive adaptations to psychological trauma; existential psychotherapy; coaching

RACHEL BROMNICK - Adolescence: the transitions to adulthood, specifically aspects concerning negotiations over risks and responsibilities and the social construction of adulthood.

SUSAN CHIPCHASE –emotion and memory; cognition

DAVID DAWSON – clinical and forensic psychology; sexual offenders

SIMON DURRANT – Cognitive neuroscience of sleep and music

PAUL GODDARD - visual processing and motion detection; visual deficits in clinical groups; consciousness and visual awareness.

LYNSEY GOZNA – interpersonal deception and credibility assessment; forensic interviewing

MARK GRESSWELL – Lincoln Director of DClinPsy programme

HARRIET GROSS - Health and wellbeing across the lifespan; psychosocial aspects of pregnancy and women’s health; cultivating individuality - identity and the environment.

KUN GUO - Visual perception and eye movement: contrast detection, motion perception, face and object recognition; neuropsychology, neurophysiology and brain imaging.

TIM HODGSON - Organisation and functions of the frontal cerebral cortex of the brain and the control of human eye movements; Social and economic neuroscience and decision making.


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TODD HOGUE - risk and personality disorder in forensic populations with intellectual disability; physiological and cognitive measures of risk with sexual offenders; attitudes and the effectiveness of staff training and support

AIDAN HART – clinical and forensic psychology, sexual offending

AVA HOROWITZ - Discursive psychology; conversation analysis; sociable argumentation; in particular, the discursive construction of identity and social relationships

JOHN HUDSON - Cognitive neuroscience; effects of ageing and neuro-degenerative disease on cognition, hemispheric asymmetries; conscious and nonconscious memory processes; psychological effects of seizure disorders and evaluation of surgical intervention; cognition and emotion.

PATRICK HYLTON – Critical psychology; Q-methodology, Qualitative data analysis; Black British male identity; Morality; Social construction of reality; constructions of terrorism

BONAVENTURA (Bino) MAJOLO - Ecological and cognitive factors affecting social behaviour in humans and in non-human animals.

GEORGE MATHER- Human visual perception, especially movement perception, visual illusions, and the perception of visual art

KERSTIN MEINTS - Child development, especially cognitive and language development, categorisation and the question of how language and categorisation interact.

HANNAH MERDIAN - offenders who use child sexual exploitation material (child pornography) and their offence characteristics; the internet as a criminal setting; psychometrics and psychological interview protocols

KIRSTY MILLER - Motor control; development of motor control in typical and atypical young children; control of bimanual aiming movements; the role of visual feedback.

ADRIAN PARKE - Behavioural addictions, particularly pathological gambling, and treatment; risk factors associated with information technology and pathological gambling

KAREN PFEFFER - Children's drawings; children's safety awareness (home safety, road safety); social-cognitive development; cross-cultural psychology.

PETRA POLLUX - Attentional processes; clinical neuropsychology; cognitive neuroscience; psychophysiology.

JON SLACK - structural aspects of human language and computational models of language; neural networks: structure encoding and processing


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JAMIE WARDMAN - Conceptualisation and articulation of risk knowledges, concerning public health, science, technology, the environment and terrorism, with power, praxis and the policy process

GARRY WILSON - Written language comprehension in adults; reading strategies and representation; language and spatial cognition; concept formation and categorisation.

EMILE VAN DER ZEE - Spatial information representation and language, and the interface between spatial information representation and gesture; comparative cognition.

FENJA ZIEGLER - social decision making; the ontogeny and epistemology of mentalising; perspective taking in narrative and space and autism spectrum disorder

Examples of recent staff outputs 2011/12

Durrant, S.J., Stocks, N. and Feng, J. (2011): Suprathreshold stochastic resonance in neural systems tuned by correlations. Phy.Rev.E. 84(1-1):011923 (Epub ahead of print)Wilson, S. & Goddard, P. (2011) The effect of cueing on change blindness and same blindness. Visual Cognition, 19 (8) pp.973 – 982Sargeant, S.J.E. & Gross, H. (2011) Young People Learning to Live With Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Working With an "Unclosed" Diary. Qualitative Health Research, 21, 1360-1370Williams, F., Mills, D. & Guo, K. (2011) Developmentof a head-mounted eyetracking system for dogs. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 194, 259-265Hall C, Hogue T, Guo K (2011) Differential gaze behavior towards sexually preferred and non-preferred human figures. The Journal of Sex Research 48:461-469Horowitz, A.D. & Spicer, L. (2011) Between sex and not sex: Graded definitions in a hierarchy of sexual behavior amongst heterosexual and lesbian emerging adults in the UK. Journal of Sex Research. DOI:10.1080/00224499.2011.635322Huddy VC, Hodgson TL, Ron MA, Barnes TRE, Joyce EM (2011) Abnormal negative feedback processing in first episode schizophrenia: evidence from an oculomotor rule switching task. Psychological Medicine 41(9) p. 1805-1814. McFarland R, Majolo B (2011) Exploring the components, asymmetry and distribution of relationship quality in wild Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus). PLoS ONE 6(12): e28826. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028826Mather G., Pavan A., Bellacosa R.M., Casco C. (2012) Psychophysical evidence for interactions between visual motion and form processing at the level of motion integrating receptive fields. Neuropsychologia, 50(1), 153-159Mercado,C.C., Merdian, H. L. & Egg, R. (2011) The internet and sexual offending: an international perspective. In: International perspectives on the assessment and treatment of sexual offenders: theory, practice and research. Wiley, pp. 507-524. ISBN 9781119990420Parke, A. & Griffiths, M.D. (2011) Effects on gambling behaviour of developments in information technology: a grounded theoretical framework. Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning. 1, 36-48Pollux, P. M.J, Hall, S., Roebuck, H. & Guo, K. (2011). ERP correlates of the interaction between attention and spatiotemporal context regularity in vision. Neuroscience 190 (2011) pp. 258–269


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http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/4474/























TEACHING AND ADMINISTRATION

The School currently runs a BPS accredited single BSc Single Honours programme in Psychology as well as a number of accredited joint programmes with other schools in the Faculty:

BSc Single Honours Psychology with Clinical Psychology BSc Psychology with Forensic Psychology BSc Psychology and Criminology BSc Psychology and Marketing Bsc Psychology and Social Policy

The School recruits strongly and around 600 undergraduate students are currently enrolled across these programmes. We are committed to the student experience and we are in the top third of psychology departments nationally in the NSS scores.

The degree programmes are modular, based on four 15 credit units per semester. Teaching varies according to module, with many supported by seminars and small group sessions. There is a tutorial programme in the first year. All students take the core modules in Psychology, and then follow different pathways according to their single or joint honours programme. Both second and final year students are able to take elective units, offered by staff and usually reflecting their areas of research.

At postgraduate level, the School runs a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology postgraduate training programme in collaboration with Nottingham University and an MSc in Child Studies in collaboration with other Schools in the Faculty, an MSc in Forensic Psychology and a professional masters in Healthcare in Secure Environments. In addition, at present, the School has10 postgraduate students enrolled on MPhil and PhD programmes as well as undergraduate interns working on university funded projects.

All staff are involved in teaching and project supervision as well as pastoral support of students and many staff also hold administrative responsibilities within an and outside the School.There are programme leaders for each of the major programmes, and the School has a Teaching Learning and Assessment Group which addresses matters relating to module and course delivery. Items are brought forward from this group to the School Meeting which takes place at least once a term and Subject Meetings, involving student representatives are also held termly. The Head of School works with a small management team of Senior Academics; there is a Senior Management Group, comprising the senior staff in the School (including Readers and PLs and the Chair of Teaching and Learning). There is also a Research Committee. Staff sit on university and faculty committees as well as having responsibility for various administrative functions within the School.

Contact details: School of PsychologyUniversity of LincolnBrayford PoolLINCOLN LN6 7TS


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Head of School: Prof Harriet Gross 01522 886064 [email protected] Administrator: Catherine Gillard 01522 886224 [email protected] of Research: Prof Tim Hodgson 01522 886159 [email protected]


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PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT · Web viewChild development, especially cognitive and language development, categorisation and the question of how language and categorisation interact. HANNAH

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