School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences – Spring Term Seminars

Please find below a list of events arranged by the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences in the Spring Term. All sessions will be hosted on Microsoft Teams.

Sessions:

Thursday 25 February at 1pm-2pm – ‘Effects of Age and Education on Language and Cognition’, Alexandre Nikolaev and Christos Pliatsikas. Link to join

• In my presentation I will discuss effects that older age and education demonstrate across domains of language and cognition: whether these domains show a) different effects of age and education, b) similar patterns of age-related change over time, and c) whether education moderates the rate of decline in these domains. I will also discuss language decline related to abnormal ageing in people with Alzheimer’s disease or mild cognitive impairment.

Thursday 4th March at 1pm-2pm – ‘Synthetic Datasets’, Dan Quintana and Lily Fitzgibbon. Link to join

• Dan Quintana from the University of Oslo will deliver his workshop on the creation of synthetic datasets for sharing the properties of a dataset while eliminating disclosure risk.

Thursday 11th March at 12pm-1pm – ‘Enhancing Diversity Training in Policing’, Netta Weinstein, Carien van Reekum. Link to join

• Prejudice continues to be a widespread problem in policing and other workplaces. In responding to this problem, billions are spent to develop and deliver diversity training meant to reduce employees’ prejudice. However, research findings, including in policing, show these attempts fail to produce meaningful change in attitudes and behaviour. This talk will describe the problem, explore solutions based in motivation science, and share the reasons for, and challenges of, testing these questions in real-world settings such as in police forces.

Thursday 11th March at 1pm-2pm – ‘Sex Differences in Interoceptive Abilities’, Jenny Murphy, Christos Pliatsikas. Link to join

Thursday 18th March at 12pm-1pm, ‘Developing an Open Research RRDP Course’, Lily Fitzgibbon. Link to join

• In this special session, we will spend the hour working in small groups to draft a short course on Open Research to be delivered as an RRDP course for PhD students. Materials will also be available for those wishing to bring Open Research into their undergraduate and postgraduate teaching.

Thursday 25th March at 1pm-2pm, ‘What’s the Point of Qualitative Research’, Kate Harvey, Christos Pliatsikas. Link to join

• I joined SPCLS nearly twenty years ago from a Health Services Research background, where qualitative research is widely used and highly valued. I was surprised to be met with considerable scepticism about qualitative approaches, and debate about whether they could even be considered “psychology”. Fast forward twenty years, and I’ve collaborated with numerous colleagues who discovered their research question might be best addressed using qualitative methods. Today I’ll be presenting some of that research and illustrating how qualitative approaches can progress our understanding of complex issues from child and adolescent mental health to food poverty, plus lots in between.