Monday 22 April 2013

Good News


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

Student News


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Congratulations everyone!

Staff News

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

Media and Community 

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

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


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

International Profile

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

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

Refereed Journal Articles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

In Press Articles 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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