Psychology

Project

Enumeration is the task of deciding How Many? (For example, how many birds in that picture?).

We want to know how enumeration occurs. We know that counting, an obvious answer, is one way but not the only way. Sometimes people "just see" that there are four (for example). Sometimes, people don't count but estimate. This is the case for enumeration by looking. But what about touching? How is this process similar to or different from looking? It matters because modes of enumeration could be specific to a sensory modality (so looking is quite different from touching) or similar modes could be available in multiple sensory modalities.

We will plan new research, collect data, analyse existing data sets, consider research findings, prepare research grant applications and reports, consider how and where to publish.A Summer Research Scholar will work on some or all of these facets.

Curiosity, a willingness to learn, and a strong work ethic are important.

Project

Rewards are critical in determining our choices.

This project looks at how we use recent experience with rewards (and potentially punishers) to predict and choose the future. The project will explore similarities and differences in the way human and animal participants use past experience to predict future events, using data from animal models and from experiments with human participants.

The project will involve:

• Overseeing recruitment, data collection, and data analysis for an experiment carried out on campus with adult human participants
• Assisting the Animal Technician with daily lab and animal-husbandry duties
• Assisting in the development/piloting of a touchscreen apparatus for pigeons
• Assisting with the running of pigeon experiments
• Analysing data from pigeon experiments.

A background in behavioral psychology/operant learning (e.g., PSYCH203 or PSYCH309) would be an asset but is not a strict requirement. Full training will be provided.

Project

Machine learning permits complex behaviour to be analysed with a new and exciting level of detail and precision.

In this project, we will use DeepLabCut to train a deep neural network to identify poses/behaviours from video footage:

1. In single-animal situations, using footage of pigeons, to identify anticipatory behaviours and to explore how environmental enrichment changes the types of behaviours pigeons engage in. The project also involves assisting the Animal Technician with daily monitoring and husbandry of our pigeons (full training provided; usually one to two hours each weekday morning)
2. In multiple-animal scenarios, using video footage of sheep and/or lambs.
   

Applicants should have a solid working knowledge knowledge of Python, and be confident they can use the DeepLabCut documentation to guide their use of/learning about DeepLabCut (see http://www.mackenziemathislab.org/deeplabcut).

Knowledge of behavioural psychology (e.g., from PSYCH203 or PSYCH309 or equivalent courses) would be a bonus but is not a prerequisite.

Project

Directly engaging in conflict, even when it involves anger and hostility, helps to resolve problems and thus improves relationships. Yet, inter-parental conflict (conflict between parents) also has harmful effects on children by spilling over to parent-child interactions, reducing parents’ responsiveness, and potentially undermining the development of conflict strategies in children.

This project examines the interconnections between inter-parental and children’s conflict management strategies. Key questions involve whether direct conflict that enables problem solving facilitates enhanced social problem solving in children’s peer relationships or whether exposure to conflict undermines emotional security and promotes damaging conflict regulation strategies in children.

This project will involve using newly developed procedures to test how different ways parents behave during conflict interactions spills over to family interactions and/or children’s conflict strategies within peer relationships.

A key task will be to code the presence of conflict strategies in adults’ or children’s recorded interactions or important outcomes of conflict management strategies, such as parental responsiveness and children’s emotion regulation during challenging family tasks.

The summer scholar will complete behavioural coding as part of a team working on this large family-based project. The resulting data will be used to test the development and outcomes of different conflict management strategies.

Project

When people have positive, supporting relationships with others they can cope more effectively with stressful life events, achieve their own goals, and have improved physical and mental health. Unfortunately, however, research has shown that people often overlook the strengths of their relationships and find it hard to appreciate what their relationship bring. Despite increasing attention given to positive processes in social relationships, such as gratitude, very little is known about the characteristics that hinder (or enhance) people’s ability to appreciate and capitalize on the strengths of their relationships. Very little is also known about how parents’ ability to leverage the strengths of their relationships affect children’s health and happiness.

The aims of this project are to:

1. Identify how important characteristics, such as depression and attachment insecurity, restrict relationship strengthening behaviours within potentially positive interactions with their partner
2. Examine how the absence of relationship strengthening behaviours spill over to children’s emotional and social wellbeing.

The project includes observational coding of a large sample of families who were video recorded as:

1. Parents’ discussed areas of strengths and conflicts in their relationships
2. Parents’ and children engaged in a potentially fun family activity. 

Constructs coded will include relationship strengthening behaviours (e.g., expression of gratitude, parental responsiveness) as well as key social behaviours that interfere with positive relationships (e.g., hostility and withdrawal).

The summer scholar will conduct their research as part of a larger team working on this project. As part of working within the REACH lab, including regular lab meetings, presentations and design meetings, the summer scholar will develop skills across all research phases and be exposed to a range of research projects and accompanying theoretical and methodological approaches.

Project

The Music Lab is a research group based at UoA Psychology and the Child Study Center at Yale University, focussing on the psychology of music. Our projects currently use three different approaches:

1. Massive online experiments using data-scientific computational tools, citizen science and gamification, and cross-cultural analyses
2. Lab-based developmental studies of infant and child music perception using looking time and psychophysiology
3. Smartphone-based studies of the real-world effects of family music on infant and parent health.

We can support 1-2 Summer Research Scholars, who would each work on one of these types of projects in collaboration with the PI (Samuel Mehr) and a postdoctoral or graduate student co-supervisor within the lab.

Skills/experience in one or more of the following could be valuable, depending on the type of research you want to be involved in:

• Work in childcare, education, or family settings
• Data analysis in R or Python
• Web development (especially javascript, React, AWS)
• Experience in another research lab
• Musical expertise. 

None of these are strictly required, though.

Note: If you wish to be considered for this project, you MUST contact the supervisor (Samuel Mehr) to express your interest before applying. Provide a brief statement of your interests and experience and a CV/resume. Candidates will only be asked to apply following a successful interview.

Project

This project uses Virtual Reality to investigate the dynamics of attention and cognitive control. In the project, we measure participants' hand, eye, and body movements as they perform computerised tasks in virtual environments.

The summer scholar will help support participant recruitment, data collection, and data processing.

Students will get hands-on experience with running experimental sessions with state-of-the-art motion tracking equipment, as well as processing the resulting 3-dimensional hand- and body-tracking data.

No specific preexisting skills are required, though applicants should be willing to learn how to use new technology and programs.

The summer scholar will be joining our active research lab, working with Dr. Erb and our team of PhD and Masters students. Applicants can learn more about our lab and research at www.cmndlab.com.

Project

We’re frequently told that humans haven’t solved climate change because our stone age minds just aren’t designed to solve the kind of long-term, large-scale collective action problem that 21st century climate change represents. This narrative emphasises individual moral responsibility of consumers over the responsibility of a few powerful leaders, and downplays the role of cultural values, norms and institutions in how we respond to climate change.

In this summer research project, you will take a critical look at evidence supporting the claim that our brains aren’t evolved to tackle climate change and seek to identify the cultural barriers to climate action.

This project will require and further develop good critical thinking, experimental design and quantitative skills. An interest in human evolution and sustainability is preferred.

Project

We are facing a cultural diversity crisis even more severe than the current biodiversity crisis. Estimates suggest most of the world’s ~7000 languages will not survive this century. Despite these dire predictions, we currently lack principled, quantitative estimates of how this process will shape future linguistic and cultural variation.

In this summer project, you will contribute to database construction and computer modelling to forecast survival trajectories for hundreds of linguistic and cultural traits.

The aim of this work is to better understand cultural and linguistic diversity loss, which may help us learn from and protect the precious diversity that remains.

Project

People with dementia or a brain injury interact with lots of professionals in the course of their care. We are exploring how best to support people with dementia or a brain injury to recognise the people in their care. To do this, we are evaluating the effects of stimuli that help identify who a person is and what their role is, for example whether it is better to wear name badges and uniforms, what the name badges should say, how people should introduce themselves and their role in a way that’s easy to understand etc. This will help inform best practice for services.

This project would benefit a student who is interested in studying in the Learning and Behaviour Programme at the postgraduate level. Having undertaken papers with a behavioural component at the undergraduate level would be an advantage.

The project will require some travel because it is being conducted in care homes and facilities in the community, as well as the ability to work flexibly across the week.

We are looking for students who are warm, friendly, and reliable. We work with real people in their homes, and therefore require professional and dependable behaviour.

Project

Tangata ako ana i te whare, te turanga ki te marae, tau ana - ‘A person who is taught at home will stand collected on the marae.’

The message this proverb carries is culturally universal: early caregiving experiences provide the foundation on which children grow into competent, integrated members of society. Indeed, caregivers provide the necessary scaffolding with which infants build early competencies that ultimately shape their life-long social, emotional, language and cognitive functioning. Central to this scaffolding is caregiver responsiveness - the ways in which caregivers are sensitive to their child’s ongoing behaviour and make adjustments to maintain the bidirectional “interaction loops” that characterise early caregiver-infant interactions. However, current understanding is one-sided due to a significant barrier: infant behaviour cannot be manipulated. Further, despite caregiver responsiveness being a culturally universal experience, we are limited in our understanding of how responsiveness is expressed in a range of cultural contexts.

Our research team has developed an innovative solution to address these limitations; a hyper-realistic computer-generated psychobiological simulation of a human infant (BabyX).

This project will involve a team of two Māori or Pacific students working with our team to pilot our new studies with BabyX and co-develop culturally responsive coding schedules to capture caregiver responsiveness in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and possibly co-develop procedures for in-depth caregiver interviews with Māori and Pacific families in future work. It is our hope that the summer student will continue their involvement in the project as they pursue their PG studies.

The student who works on this project will also help running experimental sessions with infants and/or children in the Early Learning Lab (City Campus, School of Psychology). This may involve being available on certain weekends.

The student will receive training on other research tasks such as calling and scheduling appointments, participant recruitment, conducting literature reviews, data entry, data coding, and data analysis. The student will have an opportunity to help with other projects in the lab.

Importantly, the student who works on this project will be involved in a thriving lab group over the summer months. Our group will have regular lab meetings in which we read recent articles in developmental science and have exciting discussions on topics relevant to the work in the lab. As you can see, this project will provide the student with a very unique experience; they will be exposed to every stage of research in developmental science.

Experience with infants and children would be helpful. However, of most importance is that the student would be comfortable working with parents and infants. Students involved will need to complete a confidentiality agreement.

Project

Tangata ako ana i te whare, te turanga ki te marae, tau ana - ‘A person who is taught at home will stand collected on the marae.’

The message this proverb carries is culturally universal: early caregiving experiences provide the foundation on which children grow into competent, integrated members of society. Indeed, caregivers provide the necessary scaffolding with which infants build early competencies that ultimately shape their life-long social, emotional, language and cognitive functioning. Central to this scaffolding is caregiver responsiveness - the ways in which caregivers are sensitive to their child’s ongoing behaviour and make adjustments to maintain the bidirectional “interaction loops” that characterise early caregiver-infant interactions. However, current understanding is one-sided due to a significant barrier: infant behaviour cannot be manipulated. Further, despite caregiver responsiveness being a culturally universal experience, we are limited in our understanding of how responsiveness is expressed in a range of cultural contexts.

Our research team has developed an innovative solution to address these limitations; a hyper-realistic computer-generated psychobiological simulation of a human infant (BabyX).

This project will involve a team of two Māori or Pacific students working with our team to pilot our new studies with BabyX and co-develop culturally responsive coding schedules to capture caregiver responsiveness in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and possibly co-develop procedures for in-depth caregiver interviews with Māori and Pacific families in future work. It is our hope that the summer student will continue their involvement in the project as they pursue their PG studies.

The student who works on this project will also help running experimental sessions with infants and/or children in the Early Learning Lab (City Campus, School of Psychology). This may involve being available on certain weekends.

The student will receive training on other research tasks such as calling and scheduling appointments, participant recruitment, conducting literature reviews, data entry, data coding, and data analysis. The student will have an opportunity to help with other projects in the lab.

Importantly, the student who works on this project will be involved in a thriving lab group over the summer months. Our group will have regular lab meetings in which we read recent articles in developmental science and have exciting discussions on topics relevant to the work in the lab. As you can see, this project will provide the student with a very unique experience; they will be exposed to every stage of research in developmental science.

Experience with infants and children would be helpful. However, of most importance is that the student would be comfortable working with parents and infants. Students involved will need to complete a confidentiality agreement.

Project

In this project, the student will familiarise themselves with replications in psychological science, and recent trends towards more transparency and increased validity in conducting research. The student is expected to get involved in replication work, and help collect and analyse data, and disseminate findings where appropriate.

Prior experience with statistical methods and programming is a plus.

Project

This project aims to review articles published in Organisational Psychology journals to identify critical issues in theorising and testing U- and inverted U-shaped relationships in organisational psychology research. In the end, I aim to develop a guideline to theorise and test U- and inverted U-shaped relationships in organisational psychology research.

The summer scholar is expected to be highly motivated, conscientious, and attention to details. You will learn all the needed skills in the training.

Project

Subjective value, the assessment of how valuable anything is to us given context, has been suggested to be a driving force behind many simple decisions we make daily. Understanding the ways in which we sample information and direct attention to high value stimuli (or high value features of stimuli) is critical to how we assess subjective value. One of the ways to investigate these processes is through tracking how gaze is directed within and across items and objects we must choose between.

This project will integrate novel webcam-based, AI assisted eye tracking to an existing value based decision making paradigm. Students in this project will be working alongside PhD students to implement this new equipment and software with the end goal of creating and piloting a new study.

Coding experience (Python/javascript) would be helpful but is not essential. Applicants should have an interest in cognitive psychology and experimental research.

Project

This project investigates the functional role of the hippocampus during memory and imagination. The successful candidate will be involved in a number of roles across different studies, including but not limited to:

• Data collection (both behavioural and fMRI)
• Stimulus generation (creating stimuli for an fMRI experiment)
• Data analysis (behavioural and potentially fMRI)
• Literature Review (collating recent studies investigating hippocampal involvement in memory and imagination)
• Meta-analyses (processing and analysing data from previous studies collected in the lab).

The successful candidate should have an interest in neuroimaging and cognitive psychology. Ideally, they would also have some experience in quantitative data analysis.

Project

With the relatively poor mental health and wellbeing of our Pacific peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand, it is important that the talanoa (conversation) around health and wellbeing continues within our communities. The Pasifika Mental Health in Aotearoa (PMHA) project contributes to this talanoa through developing evidence-based research to support the development of positive and action-focused strategies for our Pasifika communities.

The PMHA project is a mixed methods Pacific research project involving survey and talanoa methodologies that explores Pasifika mental health literacy in Aotearoa New Zealand.

As a summer scholar, you will work with data from the PMHA project to explore Pacific peoples and depression and its link to health and wellbeing outcomes for our Pasifika communities in Aotearoa New Zealand. More specifically, you will be guided by Pacific knowledges and methodologies to undertake a literature review, data processing and analysis, and final write-up that will contribute to a published report.

Required skills/pre-requisites: The ideal candidate will be of Pacific Island Descent, have a strong interest in Pacific health and wellbeing and/or Pacific research, have strong communication and writing skills, be highly organised and can work independently.

Timing: Starting at an agreed date after exams with weekly fono with the supervisor and a three-week break over the Christmas and New Year period.

Benefits: The project will have academic, intellectual, and practical benefits for the summer scholar.

Project

With the relatively poor mental health and wellbeing of our Pacific peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand, it is important that the talanoa (conversation) around health and wellbeing continues within our communities. The Pasifika Mental Health in Aotearoa (PMHA) project contributes to this talanoa through developing evidence-based research to support the development of positive and action-focused strategies for our Pasifika communities.

The PMHA project is a mixed methods Pacific research project involving survey and talanoa methodologies that explores Pasifika mental health literacy in Aotearoa New Zealand.

As a summer scholar, you will work with data from the PMHA project to explore Pasifika anxiety and its links to health and wellbeing outcomes for our Pasifika communities in Aotearoa New Zealand. More specifically, you will be guided by Pacific knowledges and methodologies to undertake a literature review, data processing and analysis, and final write up that will contribute to a published report.

Required skills/pre-requisites: The ideal candidate will be of Pacific Island Descent, have a strong interest in Pacific health and wellbeing and/or Pacific research, have strong communication and writing skills, be highly organised and can work independently.

Timing: Starting at an agreed date after exams with weekly fono with the supervisor and a three-week break over the Christmas and New Year period.

Benefits: The project will have academic, intellectual, and practical benefits for the summer scholar.