What's On at UWA

Join us at our information session to find out about the Psychology postgraduate programs at UWA.

Students who possess or expect to gain an honours degree (or equivalent) in Psychology are encouraged to attend the information sessions for the postgraduate programs offered by the School of Psychological Science at the University of Western Australia.

* Our professional programs in Psychology are accredited by the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council and approved by the relevant Colleges of APS.

General Introduction & Application Information 5.00 pm –5.30 pm

Wilsmore Lecture Theatre

•Professor Romola Bucks (Head of School) •Linda Thomas (Academic Services Team Leader)



Program Specific Sessions 5.40 pm –7.00 pm

Accelerated Learning Lab (ground floor GPB3 building)

Academic staff, alumni and current postgraduate students will run program specific sessions in small groups on the following:

•Clinical Psychology* •Clinical Neuropsychology* •Industrial and Organisational Psychology * •PhD •Autism Diagnosis

Afterwards, session conveners will be available for follow up questions.

There will also be an opportunity to meet potential PhD supervisors at the program specific sessions.



RSVP Drinks and light refreshments will be provided during the program specific session.

If you would like to attend this event please RSVP to [email protected] by 13thSeptember 2017

Psychology Colloquium

Tuesday 3rd October 4:00-5:00pm in Bayliss MCS G.33, followed by post-talk drinks in the Psychology Courtyard (or, in bad weather, the Psychology Common Room, 2nd floor of main psychology building)

Presenter: E/Prof Pat Michie (University of Newcastle)

Title: From clinical to pre-clinical research – using animal models to understand the neurobiology of schizophrenia.

Abstract:

In addition to a range of negative and positive clinical symptoms, patients with schizophrenia exhibit quite profound cognitive deficits that impinge on their capacity to engage in social, employment and educational opportunities. They also exhibit a range of electrophysiological and neurobiological abnormalities. Although the dominant model of schizophrenia is that it is a neurodevelopmental disorder that results in excessive dopaminergic activity as a core feature, there is increasing evidence that hypo-function of the glutamate NMDA receptor(NMDAR) system can account for a broader range of positive, negative and cognitive symptoms of the disorder. Our own research has confirmed the involvement of the NMDAR system from evidence that an electrophysiological measure that has been shown to be an index of the integrity of the NMDAR system, the mismatch negativity (MMN), is reduced in schizophrenia. Our current research is attempting a reverse translation of these well–established clinical findings to a neurodevelopmental animal model of schizophrenia in an attempt to understand the neurobiology of the disorder and potentially develop new treatments. Recent research using a mouse neurodevelopmental model of maternal immune activation either early or late in gestation seemed to offer an explanation of both the dopamine and NMDAR abnormalities with maternal immune activation (MIA) in early gestation resulting in greater dopamine disturbance (or a more positive-symptom type phenotype) but MIA late gestation indicated greater disturbance in the NMDAR system (and a more negative/ cognitive deficit phenotype). In the first series of studies we induced maternal immune activation in rat dams either early or late in gestation and examined the behavioural. cognitive and electrophysiological phenotypes in adult offspring as well as neurobiological changes, namely, in the density and expression of NMDAR subunits. The outcome of these studies suggest that MIA alone in the rat induces only subtle behavioural and cognitive abnormalities and unexpected NMDAR subunit changes that potentially have implications for treatment. In the second series of investigations currently underway, we are investigating a two-hit model of schizophrenia by combining MIA with chronic adolescent cannabis use based on the rationale that an early insult to the developing brain (MIA) makes it more vulnerable to a second insult (adolescent cannabis use) and may therefore yield a more complex schizophrenia-like phenotype in the offspring.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Pat Michie is currently Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She previously held professorial positions at UWA and Macquarie University. She is an experimental psychologist whose research has focussed on the neural basis of normal and abnormal cognition. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia and is the 2016 recipient of the Australian Psychological Society’s Distinguished Contribution to Psychological Science Award. Her research has been characterised by application of theories and methodologies from basic research in cognition and cognitive neuroscience to understand the nature of cognitive deficits and their neural basis in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and those at risk. Her research spans auditory processing deficits, impaired inhibitory control and cognitive control more generally and uses both psychophysical methods to assess performance as well as functional brain imaging methods such as event-related potentials (ERPs) of the brain. She was a key member of the Australian group who were the first to demonstrate that individuals with schizophrenia exhibit impaired automatic change detection in a background of auditory regularities, an ERP-derived observation replicated many times and one of the most robust findings in the schizophrenia literature. Her current research is focused on animal models of schizophrenia. Pat currently chairs the Research Committee of Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, and the National Committee of Brain and Mind (NCBM) of the Academy of Sciences of Australia. She is past chair of the Australian Brain Alliance, an initiative of the NCBM and the Academy. The Alliance, which is supported by the Australian Psychological Society, the Psychology Foundation and the Australasian Neuroscience Society and major research organisations, aims to secure investment in Australian brain research comparable to other international initiatives.



Ullrich Ecker, PhD Associate Professor Director, Community and Engagement School of Psychological Science University of Western Australia +61 (0)8 6488 3257 www.uwa.edu.au/people/ullrich.ecker www.cogsciwa.com @UlliEcker @UWApsych ‏

*Requires ticket - pruchase via Eventbrite or Chuffed (links at end)*

Join Team WA Homeward Bound 2018 for a lively evening of conversation and celebration on behalf of WA women in science. In a provocative moderated discussion, panelists share stories and insights from their leadership journey. Live music, silent auction, wine and canapés included (tickets $100). Cocktail attire.

Panelists: Professor Lyn Beazley (Science Ambassador), Diana Jones (WA Museum), Professor Carolyn Oldham (UWA), Professor Melinda Fitzgerald (Curtin U.)

Proceeds support Team WA Homeward Bound 2018 as we embark on a leadership journey to Antarctica for gender equity and environmental sustainability action.

Team WA Homeward Bound 2018: Rachel Zombor, School of Psychological Science UWA & Neurosciences Unit WA Health; Veronique Florec, Post-doctoral Researcher, UWA; Anais Pages, Research Scientist, CSIRO; Jessica Brainard, Curator, New Museum Project, Western Australian Museum; Valérie Sage, Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO

Chuffed: https://chuffed.org/project/homewardboundwa-2018

Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/from-perth-to-antarctica-a-leadership-journey-for-women-in-science-tickets-37326152527

This symposium brings together a panel of experts from across Australia to discuss ways to support regional and remote students to succeed in higher education. The purpose is to explore the value of investing in higher education from the perspective of the individual, community and the university sector and to question what we need to do to become a truly ‘clever country'.

The symposium will feature the following panel of experts:

Professor Grady Venville Chair (Dean of Coursework Studies, The University of Western Australia)

Tim Shanahan (Chair, WA Regional Development Trust)

Professor Sally Kift PFHEA (President, Australian Learning and Teaching Fellows, Former DVC – Academic, James Cook University)

Professor Steven Larkin (Pro Vice-Chancellor, Indigenous Education and Research, University of Newcastle)

Vicki Ratliff (Director, Equity Policy and Programmes, Australian Government Department of Education and Training)

Professor Sue Trinidad (Director, National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education)

The symposium will be held in The University Club of Western Australia Auditorium, and refreshments will be provided. Attendance is free, but tickets are limited so RSVP is essential. Reserve your ticket here: http://bit.ly/2xunNxe

Title: Current Controversies and Future Directions in the Treatment of Obesity.

Abstract: How to best support adults with obesity is a significant research and clinical challenge, not only because of the high prevalence of obesity but also due to its seeming intransient nature both in terms of prevention and treatment. Given these challenges, it is perhaps not surprising that considerable controversy has emerged in terms of how to best meet this challenge. This presentation will begin with an exploration of one of these controversies, namely, whether researchers and clinicians should continue focusing on behavioural weight loss programs for adults with obesity. The presentation will then provide an overview of two recent studies on behavioural weight loss programs that sought to increase both the effectiveness and scalability of these programs through (1) the inclusion of support people in the intervention and (2) the use of technological strategies to augment face-to-face treatment.

On November 21st, Dr Barry Doyle is holding a Computational Modelling in Health and Disease Symposium to showcase some of the exciting ways computers and computational models are being used for medical research, with applications ranging from haemodynamics to artificial intelligence. This event brings together researchers from UWA, Murdoch University, and Curtin University, as well as guests from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne and Griffith University in Queensland. For those working in this area, this should be a great opportunity to meet with existing colleagues as well as make new connections. For others, come learn about the amazing ways that computers and computational methods can help better understand physiology and help improve the way we treat patients. The venue for the symposium is the G24 Seminar Room at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. Please remember to RSVP, via the link below. The event will begin at 12.30pm after the NHMRC info session that is on in the McCusker Auditorium.

The not-for-profit sector constitutes a major part of society and the economy, both in Australia and internationally. And yet, as a sector, it remains under-researched.

With the recent arrival of Professor David Gilchrist at UWA, we hope to address this imbalance by creating an interdisciplinary Not-for-profit Research Hub where researchers with an interest in the not-for-profit sector can discuss ideas and key avenues for research.

Join us for our first seminar where we'll explore shared interests and potential Hub activities.

All disciplines are welcome.

Humans rely on memory at nearly every moment: we use our memories of the past to predict the future, and memory is essential to our concept of self. Nevertheless, our memory for the details of events is imperfect. Some details of an event are forgotten and other details can be falsely remembered. One other striking characteristic of memory is that that act of remembering can change what is being remembered: retrieving events from memory changes our memory of those individual events.

In this talk Professor Amy Criss, Head of Discipline of Psychology at Syracuse University and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow, will explain how the effects of retrieval on memory can be understood using carefully designed experiments, and show that the accuracy of memory for an event declines as we repeatedly recall that event. She will also discuss how theories of memory can be expressed as computational models, and how we can use computational models to understand how forgetting is caused by remembering.

Humans are complex social beings. Curious observers through the ages have noted the dramatic differences in human behaviour around the world. How similar or different are our personalities? To understand human behaviour, an integrated perspective is required – one which considers both what we regularly do (our personality traits) and what motivates us (our values). Traits and values have been studied separately in psychology and related disciplines, yet, what we do (our traits) must somehow be related to what we hold dearly (our values). Furthermore, how can we make sense of both the proposed similarities and differences in personality and values that have been reported by travellers, philosophers and more recently in large survey studies?

In this talk, Professor Fischer, Co-Director of the Center for Applied Cross-Cultural Research at Victoria University of Wellington and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow, will use an evolutionary perspective to address these challenging questions. He will present an integration of personality and human values into a functional framework that highlights how both psychological processes are driven by mechanisms in our brains and related to our genes. Equipped with these insights, he will then tackle why we sometimes encounter different personalities and values in some parts of the world, but also debunks the myth of large cultural differences in personality. Deep down, we are all similar and an evolutionary perspective can tell us when, where and why we may behave and value things differently. He will present a gene-culture coevolution model of personality and values that shows how genes, economics, social conditions, and climate jointly shape personality. Finally, he will provide some examples that can help people to reflect on who they are and what makes us all so fascinatingly similar, and yet different.

The debate over the origins of individual differences in expertise has raged on for over a century in psychology. The “nature” view holds that expertise reflects “innate talent”—that is, genetically-determined abilities. The “nurture” view counters that if talent even exists, its effects on ultimate performance are negligible. While no scientist takes seriously a strict nature view of expertise, the nurture view has gained tremendous popularity over the past several decades. I will argue that, despite its popularity, this environmentalist view is inadequate to account for the evidence concerning individual differences in expertise. More generally, I will argue that the nature vs. nurture debate in research on expertise is over—or certainly should be, as it has been in other areas of psychological research for decades. I will close by describing a multifactorial model for research on the nature and nurture of expertise.

Robyn Steward is a researcher, author, educator and campaigner on the autism spectrum and passionate about including the perspectives of people on the autism spectrum in research, especially on topics which are important to them. She endeavours to ensure these perspectives are heard by the scientific community - that is, that autism research is done with autistic people, rather than on, to, or, for them. In this talk, Robyn will speak about some of the research in which she has led in the past few years, including work on ‘stimming’ or repetitive behaviours in autistic people, and research on autistic people’s experiences of menstruation. She will share her experiences of working with (non-autistic) autism researchers, and especially with early-career researchers and clinicians.

A public lecture by Liz Pellicano, Professor of Educational Studies, Macquarie University.

In this presentation, Liz will argue that truly understanding autism – knowing autism – requires both objective and subjective understandings, experiences and expertise, that is, listening, learning and involving autistic people and their families in research. She investigates in depth what the autistic community rightly demands of autism research and the major changes that will need to be made to deliver on their expectations.

Liz’s talk is supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, as part of their 2018 public talk series.

Recognizing facial identity is challenging: Two photos of the same person can look quite different and photos of two different people can look very similar. Making decisions about photo identification—something passport officers, eyewitnesses and shop clerks do every day—is error prone, especially when viewing other-race and other-age faces. This is because our perception of identity in photos of unfamiliar faces is image-dependent; a small change in appearance (e.g., in lighting, make-up, facial expression) often is perceived as a change in identity. Such errors are rare when a face is familiar. Using a variety of methods (e.g., Visual Working Memory, training, and isolating specific cues to identity) I’ll explore why it is so hard to recognize identity in photos of other-race faces and why it is so hard for new other-race faces to become familiar.

With the increasing ageing population, the number of people living with dementia will quadruple by 2050. Since there are no effective cures for dementia, there is increasing emphasis on targeting modifiable risk factors, which account for 30-50% of the total risk. In this talk, Prof Naismith will present current research and evidence linking modifiable risk factors to dementia, particularly depression, low cognitive activity, physical inactivity and sleep disturbance. This will be followed by an overview and evaluation of the available lifestyle, medical and psychological interventions that hold promise for tackling dementia risk, and the challenges we are yet to overcome.

Telethon Kids Institute (UWA's Centre for Child Health Research) invites all prospective Honours, M.D., and higher degree by research students to join us for the evening to learn more about becoming a student with us!

Our supervisors will be speaking to students about their student projects and research areas. You will get to learn more about what we do, our current research projects, and our facilities. You will also get a chance to meet current students and learn more about our student programs, scholarships and support services.

When: Thursday 28th June, 5:00 – 6:30pm

Where: Telethon Kids Institute; 100 Roberts Rd, Subiaco WA 6008

RSVP: ProspectiveStudentEvening2018.splashthat.com

Associate Professor Stine Brandt Bering is a researcher within Comparative Pediatrics and Nutrition at University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She graduated as a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering (Biotechnology) from The Technical University of Denmark in 2001, and subsequently pursued her PhD studies in Human Nutrition at University of Copenhagen (2001-2006). She continued as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Copenhagen with a supplemental Marie Curie fellowship at The Institute of Food Research in Norwich, UK. Her research focus is on neonatal nutrition in relation to gastrointestinal and immune development in early life. Methods include in vivo animal models, human studies, in vitro cell models and ex vivo tissue studies to clarify specific intestinal responses and cellular mechanisms. Nutrients of interest are bioactive compounds, pre- and probiotics and human milk oligosaccharides. She is the leader of the cell and analytical laboratory in The Section for Comparative Pediatrics and Nutrition, PI of several grants and research administrator of the NEOMUNE research center.

Assistant Professor Duc Ninh Nguyen currently works at the section for Comparative Pediatrics and Nutrition, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He graduated as a Master of Science in Food Science and Technology in 2011 and obtained a PhD in Food Science and Nutrition in 2014, both at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research focus is on neonatal nutrition, gastroenterology and infectious diseases in early life. The main research tools include animal models of gut inflammation and perinatal infection (mainly preterm pigs) and in vitro intestinal epithelial cell models, together with analytical techniques related to immune assays, proteomics and protein biochemistry. He is also actively involved in design and planning of clinical trials in preterm infants, data management and biological sample analysis. He is the leader of the Immunology sub-group in the section for Comparative Pediatrics and Nutrition, co-PI and work package leader of several grants including STIMMUNE (Bioactive proteins to protect newborn neonates against perinatal inflammation, funded by Arla Food for Health) and NEOCOL (Colostrum for newborns, funded by Innovation Foundation Denmark).

A public lecture by Rob Wilson, Professor of Philosophy, La Trobe University and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Familiarity with the eugenic past, particularly that associated with the Holocaust, has primed a wariness about the potential misuse of new ventures in biology, such as the Human Genome Project and the emerging gene-editing technology of CRISPR. That critical perspective, shared by academics and lay persons alike, has sometimes cast a skeptical shadow over future uses of existing reproductive technologies both to create designer babies and to discard embryos or fetuses that do not measure up to some ideal or standard of normality. In his preface to the second edition of In the Name of Eugenics, the historian of science Daniel Kevles cautioned that the “specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary developments in human genetics”. And in his Backdoor to Eugenics the sociologist Troy Duster viewed contemporary technologies utilizing individual choice as a pathway to a eugenic future. The message here has been clear: understand past eugenics, critique present eugenics, avoid future eugenics.

Yet, for Professor Wilson, eugenics doesn’t feel like that. Not because it’s not a danger, but because its more than a mere possibility lurking in current and future technologies. That feeling stems in part from his work in oral history with eugenics survivors in the Canadian province of Alberta over the past ten years.

In this talk Professor Wilson will share his reflections on eugenics, disability, and attitudes towards human variation, adopting what he calls a standpoint eugenics, eugenics from the standpoint of those who have survived it.

Rob Wilson returned to Australia as professor of philosophy at La Trobe University in 2017 after teaching previously at Queen’s University and the University of Alberta in Canada, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in the United States. His philosophical work ranges across the cognitive, biological, and social sciences, as well as metaphysics, ethics, and the history of philosophy. Amongst his award-winning books are 'Boundaries of the Mind' (2004) and 'The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences' (1999), of which he was general editor, together with the developmental psychologist Frank Keil. Graduating with first-class honours from UWA in 1985, Rob completed his PhD at Cornell University in 1992. In 2009, Rob’s contributions to academic philosophy were recognized with his election to the Royal Society of Canada. Over the past ten years, Rob’s time and energy has been invested primarily in a number of community-focused philosophical initiatives, including founding Philosophy for Children Alberta (2008-2015), serving as the principal investigator for the internationally recognized project Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada (2010-2016), and most recently organizing the Melbourne-based network Philosophical Engagement in Public Life (PEiPL). His most recent book is 'The Eugenic Mind Project', published by the MIT Press in March 2018.

The 2018 Robin Winkler Lecture by Debra Rickwood, Professor of Psychology at the University of Canberra.

Youth mental health is of growing concern in Australia and internationally. It is now well-recognised that most mental health problems first emerge before the age of 25, and often become evident during the teenage years, when they are highly disruptive to personal, social and vocational functioning. It seems that young people are becoming more vulnerable to mental health problems and there are many powerful forces in their lives today that exacerbate this risk. Consequently, there is a high level of unmet need for effective interventions and services to help young people, and their families, deal with emerging mental health problems, although young people are often reluctant to seek such help.

This presentation will consider the what, why and how of supporting young people with mental health problems by drawing on recent data and experiences from implementation of the headspace national youth mental health initiative. It will describe what types of mental health problems are most affecting young people today and which of these are on the increase. It will demonstrate why youth mental health must be a key priority, with a focus on the life stages of adolescence and emerging adulthood. Innovative ways to respond to young people’s mental health problems will be considered. This will cover how parents, families, friends and significant others in the community can recognise and respond to young people with mental health problems; as well as how our service systems need to be reformed to better meet their needs. Research revealing the experiences that are common to most young people, as well as showing the factors that are unique to young people from diverse and more marginalised population groups will be described. The presentation will conclude with some of the ways that the community can work together to better support young Australians during this critical transition period of life.

Debra Rickwood is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Canberra. For the past eight years she has been Chief Scientific Advisor at headspace: The National Youth Mental Health Foundation, where she heads the research and evaluation team. She is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society (APS) and member of the APS College of Community Psychologists. In 2016, she was awarded the Robin Winkler Award for Applied Community Psychology Research in recognition of the research she and her team undertook to better understand the barriers and facilitators experienced by young people from diverse and more marginalised population groups to access and engage with headspace youth mental health centre services.

The Annual Robin Winkler Lecture commemorates the work of Robin Winkler, a highly influential teacher and researcher whose work was guided by humanitarian values and a relentless questioning of accepted orthodoxies. He died at the age of 43 while heading the UWA Clinical Master’s program at the Psychology Clinic, which now bears his name. In the Oxford Handbook of the History of Psychology he is described as “a singular, crusading figure” in Australian psychology.

A public lecture by Michael Corballis, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Auckland.

From the Bible to Chomsky, language is a miracle, unique to humans, and emerging as a single event, initially in a single individual, within the past 100,000 years.

In this lecture, Professor Corballis will argue instead for a Darwinian approach. Language evolved primarily to allow our species, and its forebears, to communicate about the nonpresent and share mental travels in space and time. Mental time travel itself goes far back in evolution, and our capacity to communicate about it emerged through gesture and pantomime, gradually refining into the miniaturized form of gesture that we call speech.

Michael Corballis is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Auckland. He was born and educated in New Zealand, then obtained his PhD from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he taught for some years before returning to Auckland. In 2016 he received the Rutherford Medal of the Royal Society of New Zealand for his work on brain asymmetry, language evolution, and mental time travel. His latest book is 'The Truth about Language', published by University of Chicago Press in 2017.

Bio: Leigh received his PhD from Nottingham University in 1986 and held a series of postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Liverpool until 1995 when he moved to UWA. He was awarded an ARC Federation Fellowship in 2004 and was elected to the Australian Academy in 2009. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal Behavioral Ecology, Editor of Advances in the Study of Behavior, and on the editorial board of Journal of Ethology.

Overview: Broadly my research focuses on the evolutionary process of sexual selection, and its effects on the evolution of animal form and function. Evolutionary theory is based on the fundamental assumption that organisms are constrained by a trade-off that limits the allocation of resources to different fitness enhancing traits. I will first give a general introduction to sexual selection, before briefly outline some theoretical models used to predict the evolution of male sexual traits in the face of allocation trade-offs. I will then provide some empirical studies that have sought to test these predictions.