Summer Research Program

Helping people learn to overcome cognitive bias and do good better

Supervisor: Michael Noetel

Duration: 6 weeks

Most of us want to leave the world better than we found it. But, many of the ways people go about trying to improve the world are ineffective, and at worst: harmful. We are running a series of projects that try to help people learn to overcome the biases that lead to these problems. For example, we’re launching an online course that teaches people skills to overcome those cognitive biases. We plan to test how well this program works in a range of populations, and what changes would help it work better.

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Family Life Skills Triple P trial: Supporting families’ mental health and wellbeing with a new parenting and life skills intervention

Supervisor: Dr Carys Chainey 

Duration: 6 weeks

This project aims to provide families with targeted support to meaningfully reduce the intergenerational impacts of adversity on mental health and wellbeing. We propose to conduct the first randomised controlled trial (RCT) of a new intervention, Family Life Skills Triple P (FLSTP).  This innovative program has been designed to enhance a range of parenting and life skills using a trauma-informed perspective. It aims to support parents to develop knowledge and skills to enhance self-regulation, communication, self-compassion, habit formation, and dealing with the past, in addition to positive parenting.  By assisting parents in this integrated manner, FLSTP aims to strengthen parents’ mental health, parenting skills and social support; and concurrently improve children’s mental health and social, emotional, and behavioural wellbeing.

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Supporting the next generation of parenting and family science professionals

Supervisor: Dr Carys Chainey 

Duration: 6 weeks

Early career researchers and practitioners working in parenting and family science are situated within a unique context, with challenges and opportunities specific to this field.  The support offered to this unique group should be informed by evidence, to ensure the next generation of professionals are adequately supported in ways that matter to them.    
This project aims to understand the needs and perspectives of emerging parenting and family science professionals to inform the development of a support network and resources. Using a human centred design approach focused on usability principles, the project draws on quantitative and qualitative methods, and is focused on pragmatic actions that will make a meaningful difference to the field. 

A scholar is required to assist with this project.  Their tasks and responsibilities may include: Conducting literature reviews, cleaning and preparing datasets for analysis, conducting missing values analysis and imputation, assessing the normality and reliability of scales, statistically describing the sample and scales, conducting parametric and non-parametric analyses (e.g., correlations, regression), writing up the methods used and the results obtained, and creating publication-quality tables and figures to depict results.  In addition, the creation of plans, resources, websites and other outputs will be undertaken with the collaboration of the project team. 

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Diversity of Psychology Coursework

Supervisor: Dr Hema Preya Selvanathan

Duration: 6 weeks

This project aims to examine the perspectives that are included or excluded in the teaching of psychological sciences to postgraduate/graduate students. We examine diversity in several ways, such as the extent to which assigned readings include 1) authors from historically underrepresented backgrounds in terms of gender, race/ethnicity, and country/region, 2) the locations and populations studied, and 3) the range of topics covered. The findings of this research will contribute to our understanding of potential underrepresentation in the teaching of psychology and offer insights on how to diversify our curriculum. 

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Everyday Resistance in the Workplace

Supervisor: Dr Hema Preya Selvanathan

Duration: 6 weeks

The student will have the opportunity to contribute to our ongoing research. The key task includes data analysis which involves coding of open-ended data (e.g., content analysis), conducting statistical analyses (e.g., using SPSS, R, or other programming languages), data visualisation (e.g., producing figures and graphs), and/or writing up a report and presentation of findings. The student will work as part of a team with other researchers. The student is expected to attend regular (weekly or biweekly) meetings and read relevant literatures on the topic. 

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Raising the age of criminal responsibility

Supervisor: Professor Winnifred Louis 

Duration: 6 weeks

The project will consider psychological factors relating to the campaign to Raise the age of criminal responsibility across the country to age 14, including perceived norms, factors relating to willingness to participate in collective or political action in campaigns for and against raising the age.  The literature review (see below) will feed into the design of an experiment where we examine the impact on attitudes and actions of interventions that for example ask participants to reflect on their own youthful criminal activity; reflect on the evidence base regarding the causes of youth crime (i.e., social and political alienation; access to resources); or reflect on how to use social media for good.

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Awareness of human rights laws

Supervisor: Professor Winnifred Louis 

Duration: 6 weeks

The project will consider psychological factors relating to awareness of human rights laws, including past life experiences (e.g., have people used the laws), access and awareness in specific demographics, awareness of the human rights act in QLD, attitudes & issues vs perceptions.  If we can get the data, the summer scholar may look at existing data from UQ law regarding Queenslanders’ attitudes to the human rights acts.  The literature review (see below) will feed into the design of possible experiments, where we examine the impact on attitudes and actions of interventions.

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Silencing and taboos and collective violence

Supervisor: Professor Winnifred Louis 

Duration: 6 weeks

The project will consider psychological factors relating to silencing and taboos and collective violence. We will ask you to explore and engage previous research on the erasure of the frontier wars: that is, the absence of the story of violent colonisation of Australia ongoing; how this affects Australians’ ability to think about war/violence in general, including occupation and violent possession in other countries, e.g., Israel-Palestine, Ukraine. We will ask you to gather together (if any) data on the level of awareness of our past history among different generations, including people of different ages and 1st / 2nd / 3rd + generations immigrants’ perceptions.

You may also consider the erasure of story telling and migrant narratives from settler colonial culture because of grief and loss. Do these losses for migrants of culture, language, history, land, tradition become a barrier for facing First Nations experiences? Other themes to explore past research about concern the relationship of support for war and militarism in relation to acknowledgement of our colony’s history, as well as family narratives and conversations (e.g., recall of conversations and events with their parents / in their surrounds about contact with Aboriginal peoples and settler violence or cooperation). You will also consider and engage the literature on moral injury, taboos, and silencing/collective memories more broadly.

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Storytelling and sexual trauma/violence against Indigenous people

Supervisor: Professor Winnifred Louis 

Duration: 6 weeks

The project will consider psychological factors relating to Storytelling and sexual trauma/violence specifically against Indigenous people. We will ask you to explore and engage previous research on Narratives of people’s experience of sexual predation and sexual violence among Indigenous populations, and on how parents and older people talk to younger people about sexual violence. This project involves looking at the psychological research as well as interdisciplinary research in other areas.

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Storytelling and sexual trauma/violence

Supervisor: Professor Winnifred Louis 

Duration: 6 weeks

The project will consider psychological factors relating to Storytelling and sexual trauma/violence. We will ask you to explore and engage previous research on Narratives of people’s experience of sexual predation and sexual violence, and on how parents and older people talk to younger people about sexual violence. This project involves looking at the psychological research as well as interdisciplinary research in other areas.

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Live Mind Readings

Supervisor: Professor Derek H. Arnold

Duration: 6 weeks

We are able to decode what people are thinking from analyses of EEG recordings of their brain activity, in real time while they are having their thoughts. This is relatively easy when the thoughts in question instigate very different patterns of brain activity, such as when people imagine having audio or visual experiences. What is less clear is if similar levels of successful live mind reading can be used to distinguish different imagined experiences within a single sensory modality. For instance, can we discern if people are imagining loud as opposed to soft sounds, or a bright sunny day as opposed to a black night? 

In this project, we will instruct people to have different imagined experiences, and access how well we can decode those experiences live while they are happening. Live decoding success rates will be compared to subjective ratings, regarding the similarity of imagined experiences, and to the success rates of more detailed, offline decoding processes. 

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Human perception

Supervisor: Dr Anthony Harris

Duration: 6 weeks

Human perception is remarkably variable. When repeatedly presented with the same ambiguous stimulus (e.g., the well-known Rabbit-Duck Illusion), viewers will sometimes perceive it one way, sometimes the other. This is because the state the brain is in when new information arrives influences the way that information is processed! This project will involve examining how pre-stimulus neural signals predict subsequent perception, and how this relationship is influenced by factors such as temporal expectation, or expectation of a particular stimulus.

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Metacognition and Face Adaptation

Supervisor: Professor Derek H. Arnold

Duration: 6 weeks

The appearance of facial images can be changed by prior exposure (adaptation) to different facial images. This can impact naturalistic judgments, such as which of two faces appears more masculine. It is thought this is due to an ongoing calibration of our visual brains to the typical visual environment. 

People also experience feelings of confidence when they make perceptual decisions. When two images have the same appearance, for instance, people will experience greatest levels of uncertainty if they are nonetheless asked to categorise the apparently matched images on the basis of a difference in appearance (i.e. which of the facial images appears more masculine?). This is a form of metacognition, as the feelings of confidence relate to an evaluation of our intrinsic thought processes.  

In this project, we will assess the idea that the appearance of facial images is changed by a calibration process that changes the appearance of the facial images, by additionally asking if this calibration process instigates equal changes to decisional confidence. 

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Social and Emotional Processing in Corpus Callosum Dysgenesis

Supervisor: Professor Gail Robinson 

Duration: 6 weeks

Corpus callosum dysgenesis (CCD) occurs when the corpus callosum fails to develop typically. It is a relatively rare congenital neurological disorder, and is often associated with cognitive dysfunction and social / emotional challenges. The aim of the project is to investigate cognition (i.e. thinking skills), language, emotional processing, and social interactions in individuals with CCD. This project will involve analysis of neuropsychological test data. We will be comparing different neuropsychological tasks, several of which gauge social and emotional difficulties, to characterise cognitive, social, and emotional functioning in people with CCD. 

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Examining a brief compassion focused intervention on compassionate behaviour

Supervisor: Dr James Kirby

Duration: 6 weeks

This project is examining the impact of a self-directed audio guided brief compassion focused intervention on compassionate behaviour. Participants in the study are randomised to a compassion focused intervention or a control condition with is focused on rhythmic breathing. At time 2 the participants come to the lab and complete a behavioural task that assesses compassion. Our prediction is that those in the compassion intervention should engage in more compassionate behaviour than the control condition (the breathing condition). For this study we require you to help with the data collection, this will include meeting participants, acting as an experimenter, and study confederate. You will be working alongside Dr Chase Sherwell and Dr James Kirby. This study was funded by the US Mind & Life Institute.

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

Supervisor: Dr Kana Imuta

Duration: 6 weeks

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 (for a review, see Lui & Quezada, 2019). 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 (e.g., Tineo et al., 2021).

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. As a Summer Research Scholar on this project, you will be involved in the process of coding the stories. 

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How does accent affect our people perception?

Supervisor: Dr Kana Imuta

Duration: 6 weeks

In modern day multicultural societies, accent is one of the most meaningful cues to one’s background. We readily use accent to evaluate others and interact accordingly, but how this manifests in prejudice and discrimination is hardly recognised by society and largely unexplored by researchers. As a Summer Scholar, you will contribute to a research programme that seeks to understand how and why accent comes to be a powerful cue in our everyday social interactions. The specific tasks will be discussed with each student, but these will likely involve some ‘hands-on’ research (e.g., recruitment, data collection, coding) with children and/or adults in this line of work. 

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The adaptation, acceptability and implementation barriers of a self-efficacy program (GROUPS 4 HEALTH) to prevent and manage loneliness in the community across age groups and settings

Supervisor: Dr Magnolia Cardona 

Duration: 6 weeks

Social disconnection and loneliness are commonly reported in young people in transition to high school and university as well as among older people living with chronic diseases, and if unmanaged can further undermine quality of life, emotional health, and social functioning.  We have developed a program that directly targets social connectedness, empowering people to build and sustain their social networks in ways that will improve their psychosocial health. This program, GROUPS 4 HEALTH (G4H), has proven efficacy under research conditions,  as demonstrated in three trials1-3, and in its current form has been found to be both feasible to deliver and acceptable to clients2. Our current initiative is translating this evidence into the real-world settings of high schools, residential aged care, selected health services, and the community.  We are seeking the contributions of students into subprojects to progress the program of research. 

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Clinical audit of feedback provision to clients receiving alcohol and other drug treatment

Supervisors: Professor Leanne Hides, Dr Gabrielle Campbell, and Dr Nina Pocuca

Duration: 6 weeks

Growing evidence supports the efficacy of feedback-informed psychological treatment for common mental health (e.g., depression, anxiety) and alcohol and other drug (AOD) problems. Despite this encouraging evidence, feedback-informed treatment is yet to be routinely-implemented in AOD treatment settings.  

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What can sensory perception tell us about the brain?

Supervisors: Dr Harriet Dempsey-Jones

Duration: 6 weeks

Our senses (vision, audition, touch, taste, smell) are incredibly important to our normal daily functioning. They are our bridge to the outer world, allowing us to understand and experience what is around us. Given how important they are, we have a lot to gain by optimising how our senses function.

My research shows that, just like many other skills, you can actually train your senses to improve. Not only is this useful on its own, but this work also shows we can use sensory training to learn about the brain.

For example, I’ve shown that when you train a person to improve touch perception on their middle finger, their perception improves on this finger, but also on the index finger of the other hand (even though this finger never had any training).

This shows us touch training doesn’t change anything about your finger itself or its sensory receptors, but causes changes in the brain. Because your two index fingers have a connection in the brain, they both learn. This is just one example of how we can look at patterns of sensory learning to find out hidden facts about the brain.

The project I will be offering will look at this sensory learning phenomenon – trying to find out more about what we can learn from it. Some previous research shows this spreading of touch learning does not happen when you use vibration stimuli as the training stimuli, training is restricted to the trained finger. We will try find out why. We may also look at other questions, like whether adding visual stimuli that match the touch stimuli (multi-modal stimulation) might help boost this learning process. Or whether your touch perception before you start can predict how successful your training will be.

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The politics of fear

Supervisors: Professor Winnifred Louis 

Duration: 6 weeks

The project will consider psychological factors relating to the politics of fear.   We will ask you to explore and engage previous research on why leaders move towards fear-oriented policy, when and why it appeals to voters and community members, and why media outlets promote fear narratives.  This project involves looking at the psychological research as well as interdisciplinary research in other areas. The literature review will build towards and inform possible experimental research testing the impacts of diverse messages and developing interventions.

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Electrophysiological investigations of visual awareness

Supervisors: Associate Proffessor Alan Pegna

Duration: 6 weeks

The project for this summer is to explore how the brain responds to threat both when it is expecting it, and when it isn’t. We will be measuring brain activity using electrodes placed on the surface of the scalp of participants while they explore the visual field in search of a threat. The threat will be either an angry face or a biologically-relevant stimulus (e.g., spiders) and they will be either expected or unexpected (high or low probability of appearance). 

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Counterfactual thinking and social judgements in children

Supervisors: Dr Jonathan Redshaw

Duration: 6 weeks

Counterfactual thinking involves imagining alternative versions of past events and reasoning about how such alternatives would have affected the present. Such thinking is crucial to many complex social judgements, as when considering whether someone who committed a moral transgression could have made a better choice. Previous research has established that children begin to think counterfactually around 6 years of age (e.g., Redshaw & Suddendorf, 2020, Trends in Cognitive Sciences), but studies have only recently started to examine how such thinking influences children’s social judgements (e.g., Gautam, Hall, Suddendorf, & Redshaw, 2023, Child Development). The current study will involve asking 4- to 9-year-old children to evaluate characters who chose to act in a way that benefitted or harmed another, as well as characters who were compelled to act in a way that benefitted or harmed another. For instance, the study may examine when children begin to understand that people are less likely to forgive others who have actively chosen to harm them.

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Are dogs our best friends? The impact of dog ownership on the mechanisms underlying social cognition

Supervisors: Associate Professor Jess Taubert

Duration: 6 weeks

From the moment we are born, we follow the gaze of others. Not only is gaze following thought to be a core aspect of social cognition in itself, it is an essential developmental building block for language acquisition and theory of mind. However, we do not yet understand whether our capacity to follow the gaze of others is driven exclusively by human gaze direction cues. This project is designed to investigate the plasticity underlying gaze following by measuring the impact of pet ownership on our sensitivity to gaze direction cues in nonhuman faces. This line of investigation is significant and impactful because it will inform neural models of gaze following and social attention. Further it will provide empirical support for the use of animal-assisted interventions for mitigating the symptoms of attentional and affective disorders.

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Does task change our perception of face pareidolia?

Supervisors: Associate Professor Jess Taubert

Duration: 6 weeks

As social primates, we are hypersensitive to faces and face-like patterns in the environment. Sometimes we even see faces where none exist, like on a piece of burnt toast or on the trunk of a tree. This phenomenon is known as face pareidolia and it is a very common visual illusion that we share with newborn infants and monkeys.

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Forecasting the long-term impact of working hours on mental health and well-being.

Supervisors: Dr Timothy Ballard

Duration: 6 weeks

This project examines how the amount of time people spend at work affects their mental health and wellbeing. More than half the world’s population currently work. At the same time, 15% of working aged adults live with a mental health condition. We know that mental health has far-reaching consequences on an individual’s ability to work, as well as their families, communities, and society at large. For example, 12 billion working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety predominantly from reduced productivity. Consistently long working hours is thought to lead to poorer mental health and wellbeing outcomes for many people across different jobs and countries. Therefore, the workplace and in particular the hours people work, is a critical means through which mental health can be protected and improved. 

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