What's On at UWA

Derek Arnold’s research focuses on issues that arise due to the functional architecture of human sensory processing. Sensory analyses are often initially independent, can take place in different brain regions and be completed at different rates. How then do they combine across space and time in the brain to create subjectively uniform experiences? How do we discern when one event happened relative to another?

Dr. Derek Arnold completed his PhD at Macquarie University in 2003. He then took up an Anglo-Australian Research Fellowship, funded by the Royal Society. In 2006 he took up a continuing position at the University of Queensland, initially as an ARC funded Australian Postdoctoral Fellow, then as an ARC funded Australian Research Fellow, and in 2014 he began an ARC funded Future Research Fellowship.

Title: Once, twice or thrice upon a time: Audio-visual temporal recalibration is driven by decisional processes

“Time is an illusion. Lunch time doubly so” (Adams, 1979). A malleable sense of time is not unique to the bacchanal, but commonplace, resulting in some striking, and some subtle, illusions. For instance, after exposure to an audio-visual asynchrony, a subsequent similar audio-visual test can seem more synchronous than it would without the pre-exposure – an audio-visual temporal recalibration (TR). The underlying cause(s) is unclear. One suggestion is that TR reflects changes in processing speed. This seems unlikely as collaborators and I have shown that one can induce simultaneous opposite TRs simultaneously, and that these tend to be tied to actor identity rather than to spatial location. Another suggestion is that TR results from multiple channels tuned to different temporal offsets, with exposure to asynchrony causing systematic changes in channel responsiveness and encoded timing. A third explanation is that TR primarily reflects changes in decisional criteria. Consistent with this last suggestion, we have found that TR is strongly influenced by task demands. TR is approximately halved by asking people if sounds preceded or lagged visual events, or if timing was indeterminable, as opposed to simply asking if signals were synchronous or asynchronous. We believe the former task encourages participants to adopt more rigorous and stable criteria, highlighting the importance of these processes over changes in the responsiveness of hypothetical channels, for which no firm evidence exists.

Winthrop Professor Ted Snell, Director of the UWA Cultural Precinct, invites you to the opening of three new exhibitions: p a n o r a m a + Transcending Borders + Worldwide Backyard at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery.

Visit the gallery website for more information on the event and upcoming exhibitions. RSVP to the opening via email to [email protected] or by telephone to (08) 6488 3707.

The festival coincides with Chinese Youth Day and is a celebration of Chinese music and Chinese influenced music including works for chamber orchestra, string quartet, piano trio, solo violin and cello. The concert will feature conductor Raymond Yong and soloists Alexandra Isted (violin) and Jeremy Huynh (cello) performing a variety of works including the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto with chamber orchestra in the beautiful setting of the St George's College Dining Hall. Guests are invited to join the cultural festival before the concert. From 5.45 pm please come to enjoy the various cultural offerings available from kung fu and calligraphy demonstrations, fan dancing and much more. Refreshments that includes Chinese food will be served throughout the festival. The concert will commence at 7.00 pm and is free. Bookings are essential as there is limited space.

Does your child live in fear of needles or blood? If so, read on...

Blood-Injection-Injury Phobia is a fear that is triggered by seeing blood or an injury, or by receiving an injection or other invasive medical procedure. People vary in the way they react to situations involving blood or injections. Some individuals may feel disgust, nausea, or dizziness. Some people may even faint.

The Robin Winker Clinic is a Clinical Psychology unit linked to the School of Psychology at The University of Western Australia. The Clinic will be running a group treatment program for adolescents (14 years – 17 years) for Blood-Injection-Injury Phobia. The treatment is based on evidence from up-to-date research, and was co-developed by Dr Andrew Page, a psychologist and researcher from the School who specialises in anxiety disorders. The program will run for 8 one and a half hour sessions, plus a follow-up session approximately one month after completion. Through this program, children will work in a supportive environment to challenge their fears and learn coping strategies to control anxiety and be less worried when getting an injection, seeing blood, or when visiting the doctor for a medical procedure. Techniques for preventing fainting and for coping with feelings of disgust are also introduced.

What do you do now? If you would like to reserve a place for your child in this treatment program, or if you would like more information, please call the Clinic on 6488 2644 or email [email protected]

The Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences will be hosting an evening for prospective applicants to the School Leaver Pathways for the Doctor of Medicine (MD).

Year 12 students who are considering applying to one of the School Leaver Pathways are encouraged to attend.

Booking is not required; however applicants will have priority to seating (ahead of parents, teachers and friends) should there be more attendees than the venue capacity.

Scientists have wondered for some time whether plants, like animals, can truly learn from the past and adjust their future behavior appropriately. We adopted the same approach used in studies of animal learning and memory and put the sensitive plant Mimosa to the test.

We found that plants too can learn, and rapidly, when circumstances demand it, but most importantly they remember what has been learnt for several weeks (at the very least). These findings demonstrate that memory is not property special to organisms with a nervous system, inviting us to re-examine the fundamental mechanisms shaping behavior across living systems.

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

****All Welcome****

The Institute of Advanced Studies is pleased to announce a new series for 2014. ‘On the Edge’ will provide lectures, forums and debates on a variety of topics. This inaugural ‘On the Edge’ lecture will be given by Emeritus Professor Bill Louden.

The review of the national curriculum looks like another round of the long-running left-right curriculum wars. In this talk Bill Louden will provide a personal view of the strengths and weaknesses of Australia’s national curriculum. How fair are the criticisms of left-wing bias and how hard would that be to fix? How important is it to have a national curriculum in a federation, anyway? And how does it compare with the curriculum in countries that beat Australia in international league tables?

Bill Louden is a curriculum warrior from way back. He has worked as a curriculum writer in English in the 1980s and as a curriculum studies academic in the 1990s. As Chair of the Curriculum Council he presided over the end of outcomes-based education in WA in the late 2000s, and from 2008 to 2012 he was a board member of the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority – the body that developed the national curriculum. He is currently an Emeritus Professor of Education at The University of Western Australia, where he has also served as Dean of Education and Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor.

It's a torrid space, between healthcare budgets and complex ethical questions of end-beginning of life. Much of our talk takes place in a vacuum. So, taking a leaf from "Life of Brian" this WXED talk uses multi-media to find the pioneers and principles that Christianity has contributed to healthcare. This event is an experiment in thinking beyond the silos and we are looking for you to join the conversation.

A public lecture by Emily Darling, the David H Smith Conservation Research Postdoctoral Fellow, University of North Carolina.

Coral reefs are increasingly threatened by local and global stressors and there is mounting evidence that reefs are shifting into new species and communities. What will coral reefs look like in the future, and what ecosystem goods and services will altered reefs continue to provide? This lecture by Emily Darling, the David H Smith Conservation Research Postdoctoral Fellow, University of North Carolina, will outline a new, trait-based approach that she and her fellow researchers have used to classify life-history strategies for global scleractinian corals, which can be used to assess how reef-building corals are changing in response to human pressures.

Cost: free, but RSVP essential via www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/darling

Migraines are experienced by a substantial proportion of the population and, appropriately, the focus of discussion is usually on the headache phase. There are often visual sequelae associated with the headache but our research has been directed at visual performance in the period between headaches. The talk will describe a number of quite long-lasting changes in visual performance. I will outline the details of those changes, outline our investigation of what other migraine and cognitive characteristics they are associated with, examine and describe our effort to ascertain what aspects of the visual pathways and visual performance are affected, how long the effects last, and describe a re-assuring study examining potential impact on driving behaviour.

Winthrop Professor David Badcock is an ARC Australian Professorial Fellow at The University of Western Australia in the School of Psychology. He received his D.Phil. in Experimental Psychology at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and then held post-doctoral appointments at UC: Berkeley and Durham University before returning to Australia to Melbourne University. In 1996 he was appointed Professor at The University of Western Australia and served a period as Head of School and is currently an Honorary Professor of Vision Science at The University of Nottingham and President of the Psychology Foundation of Australia. The focus of his research is on behavioural measurement of human visual performance in both normal and abnormal groups of observers. Currently the laboratory group is running long-term projects examining 1) how humans integrate signals across space and time to perceive both the speed and direction of object and self-motion, 2) the processes that allow us to determine the location of objects within the environment and 3) the processes that help us to integrate local signals to determine object shape. This work is also being applied to determine the nature of the long-lasting changes in visual performance that arise as a consequence of migraine headaches, to early detection and functional understanding of the losses associated with Glaucoma and to an investigation of the unusual pattern of strengths and weaknesses of the visual processing in Autism.

This book was funded by a University Centenary Grant with detailed vignettes of 71 places named after personalities on the Crawley Campus. An initiative of the UWA Historical Society, it includes a fold-out map showing each location. Join the authors and their many supporters for the launch.

A lecture by Professor Norman Sartorius, President, Association for the Improvement of Mental Health Programmes & former director of the World Health Organization’s Division of Mental Health.

Stigma attached to mental illness is the main obstacle to progress in the field of mental health.

It affects the life of people who suffer from mental illness, their families, mental health services and treatment methods used in dealing with mental illness. In fighting stigma, countries, as well as agencies and institutions, have adopted a number of postulates which need re-examination because they did not allow as much success to anti stigma programmes as one would expect from the investment made.

The lecture will discuss these postulates and propose ways in which they could be re-formulated so as to allow the development of effective interventions against stigma and its consequences.

Cost: free, but RSVP required via http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/sartorius

Do you live in fear of needles or blood? If so, read on...

Blood-Injection-Injury Phobia is a fear that is triggered by seeing blood or an injury, or by receiving an injection or other invasive medical procedure. People vary in the way they react to situations involving blood or injections. Some individuals may feel disgust, nausea, or dizziness. Some people may even faint.

The Robin Winker Clinic is a clinical psychology unit linked to the School of Psychology at The University of Western Australia. The Clinic will be running a group treatment program for Blood-Injection-Injury Phobia. The treatment is based on evidence from up-to-date research, and was co-developed by Dr Andrew Page, a psychologist and researcher from the School who specialises in anxiety disorders. The program will run for 8 two-hour sessions, plus an initial assessment session before the group commences and a follow-up session 4-6 weeks after completion. Through this program, individuals will work in a supportive environment to challenge their fears and learn coping strategies to control anxiety and be less worried when getting an injection, seeing blood, or when visiting the doctor for a medical procedure. Techniques for preventing fainting and for coping with feelings of disgust are also introduced.

What do you do now? If you or someone you know would like to take part in this treatment program, or if you would like more information, please call the Clinic on 6488 2644 or email [email protected]

Dates: 6-8pm, Tuesday May 13th to Tuesday July 1st. Fees: $30 per session and $35 for the assessment, 25% discount if paid up front. Reduced fees are available for full time students and pensioners. UWA Location: Robin Winkler Clinic, 1st floor, Third General Purpose Building, Myers St.

The Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences will be hosting an evening for prospective students: to one of the School Leaver Pathways for the Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD), to one of the Graduate Pathways for the DMD or to the Graduate Pathway for the Doctor of Podiatric Medicine (DPM).

Year 12 students, university students and university graduates who are considering applying to the DMD are encouraged to attend. University students and graduates who are interested in applying to the DPM are also encouraged to attend.

Booking is not required; however applicants will have priority to seating (ahead of parents and friends) should there be more attendees than the venue capacity.

Presentation Synopsis

What will it take to make Perth a centre of culture in the 21st Century? It is possible, indeed it is vital, for Perth to become a centre of cultural life for our region if it is to maintain it’s affluence and grow to become the powerhouse it has the potential to be. Sharing the same time zone as 60% of the world's population and in close proximity to what will become the major economies of our time, we are perfectly poised to become a major international centre of cultural activity, but it will take vision and commitment!

About the Speaker

W/Prof Ted Snell AM, CitWA was born in 1949, at Geraldton, Western Australia. After completing an Associateship in Art Teaching he travelled to England to undertake postgraduate study in Birmingham. He returned to Australia and began teaching part-time at WAIT (now Curtin University), where he was Professor of Contemporary Art and Dean of Art, John Curtin Gallery. In 2009 he was appointed as Winthrop Professor and Director of the Cultural Precinct at The University of Western Australia.

Over the past two decades W/Prof Snell has contributed to the national arts agenda through his role as Chair of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, Chair of the Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools, Chair of Artbank, Chair of the Asialink Visual Arts Advisory Committee and as a Board member of the National Association for the Visual Arts. He has been a commentator on the arts for ABC radio and television and is currently Perth art reviewer for The Australian and a regular contributor to local and national journals. He has published several books and has curated numerous exhibitions, many of which document the visual culture of Western Australia.

An understanding of how the physical habitat influences phytoplankton behaviour is critical to the ecological health of deep lakes in the face of global warming and increased nutrient loading.

In this talk I will present the phytoplankton concentrations observed in Lake Iseo, a deep subalpine lake located in northern Italy, during the July 2010 bloom season and derive a patch categorization and growth interpretation based on the time scale hierarchy of physical and biological processes. By estimating the time scales, I will develop a general framework of the spatial distribution of phytoplankton concentration in Lake Iseo and illuminate the characteristics of their ecological niches.

Bio

Research Associate Professor Clelia Luisa Marti is a field-oriented Physical Limnologist and provides scientific leadership to the Centre for Water Research real-time field investigation and modelling predictions in aquatic environments. Her research interests lie in transport and mixing processes in lakes, rivers, estuaries and coastal seas.

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

      ****All Welcome****

If you can't escape from the reality of your life, and are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, The Robin Winkler Clinic is here to help! This clinic is linked to the School of Psychology at UWA. Post-graduate Clinical Psychology trainees at the clinic will soon be starting a stress management treatment programme for adults. The treatment is evidenced based and supervised by experienced Clinical Psychologists.

The programme will run over six weeks with a two hour session each week, plus a follow-up four weeks after completion. There will also be an initial individual assessment at a mutually agreed time.

If you would like to reserve a place or need more information, please call the Clinic on 6488 2644 or email [email protected]

Fees: $30 per session, 25% discount on sessions if paid up front. Initial assessment $35. Free for full-time students and pensioners.

The confidential sessions will be held at the Robin Winkler Clinic on the 1st floor of the Third General Purpose Building, UWA.

Come and check out the UWA stand at the Careers, Education and Employment Expo and discover how we can help you achieve your study and career goals.

DATES: Thursday 15 - Sunday 18 May 2014

TIMES: Thursday 9:00am - 3:00pm; Friday 9:00am - 3:00pm; Saturday 10:00am - 4:00pm; Sunday 10:00am - 4:00pm

VENUE: Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre

Free admission.

Please note: this event is not organised by UWA.

'Verily it is by beauty that we come at wisdom,'so it says at Winthrop Hall, so what are all the 'words' for? This WXED talk presents stunning visuals of soaring and uplifting Christian art and some stories of iconclasm and censorship in order to draw a picture of Christianity's contribution to our current artistic culture.This event is an experiment in thinking beyond the silos and we are looking for you to join the conversation.

Join us for casual drinks and a short presentation from Steven Lawrence, the Executive Director of the WA Institute of Sport, who will provide a compelling insight into how the Australian sporting industry has had to adapt and adopt concepts from the business world to retain Australia's preeminent position as a sporting super achiever.

Tickets at the door - $15 GMA members | $25 guests