Category / Psychology

Toward a better science of promoting walking: A cross-school Fusion project

Fusion

 

Samuel Nyman (Psychology, DEC), Andrew Callaway (ST), and Kelly Goodwin (ST) were awarded Research Development Fund – Small Grant funding for 2013 to conduct a study to promote walking among older people. Over the summer they identified a further fusion opportunity so that students from both schools could be involved. They report their experience here:

Co-creation in the School of Tourism

Our study began with the purchase of pedometers (small device to count walking steps) and actigraphs (small device to count walking steps but can also measure intensity, i.e. if walking or running). These were then used by students in the School of Tourism in a group project. Their task was to recruit 10 older people from the local community to take part in a study whereby they wore the devices every day for 60 days to measure how much walking they did. But this was not just a sports science project to look at whether pedometers or actigraphs reported the same results. It was multidisciplinary in that participants were enrolled into an N-of-1 randomised controlled trial (RCT), whereby each day they took part in a different psychological condition. Each morning participants had to set a goal for the day that was either to increase their walking steps or eat more fruit and vegetables (active control condition). They also had to either wear a pedometer that showed them how many steps they had walked so far that day, or a pedometer that was sealed (and so they would not know how many steps they had walked; another active control condition). These different conditions were based on control theory, that suggests that if people set themselves a goal to walk more, and can keep check on how much they have done, then they will be likely to walk more steps on those days than on the other days (when they had to state a goal for fruit and vegetable intake and could not see how many steps they have done). N-of-1 trial designs are recommended by the MRC framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions and help ascertain whether theories work at the individual level.

This part of the project was completed before the summer of 2013, and provided students in the School of Tourism a group project and a very useful learning experience. Students were posed with a more challenging and rewarding project of engaging with older people with the local community. They also had to contend with the challenges of group work, project management, learning and teaching others to use the objective physical activity monitors, and dealing with the challenges of conducting short-longitudinal data collection in the field. The students helped in the co-creation of new knowledge to test if pedometers or actigraphs were better at measuring walking activity, and in testing whether control theory shows promise as a means of behaviour change at the individual level measured by walking activity.

Co-creation in the School of Design, Engineering and Computing

Before launching into the analysis over the summer, the project team (Nyman, Callaway, and Goodwin) identified a further opportunity to enhance the data collected by the above student group project and provide a further opportunity for fusion.

Andrew Callaway identified that published studies in this area simply compare one measure of physical activity with another, as we had done, with no evidence as to which is the closest to a ‘true’ measure of what really happened (both devices will not be completely accurate). He proposed a further study that compares the two measures of pedometers and actigraphs against a criterion measure – a measure that was known to be truly accurate. This entailed the design and implementation of a laboratory-based study whereby students would walk on a treadmill and have their physical activity monitored by several devices simultaneously, including manual and video-recording of steps walked.

The set up entailed volunteers to walk on a treadmill at different speeds (all comfortable walking paces) with pedometers, actigraphs, and a sensewear armband strapped on them, and a video camera recording their walking plus other volunteers manually counting the number of walking steps performed. You will be surprised how difficult it can be to correctly count the number of steps walked in a two minute period! With the combination of all these measures we should arrive at a close to ‘criterion’ measure to compare the devices with.

Third year students from the BSc Psychology framework who had elected to study the Health Psychology unit volunteered to help with this experiment in the Sports Lab. This was a great learning opportunity for the psychology students as none of them had seen the sports lab before or the equipment used for physical activity monitoring. In the session the students also had the opportunity to engage with two members of staff and five third year student volunteers from the School of Tourism to access their expertise in sports science and performance analysis. Dr Nyman also used the sessions as an opportunity to relate the material from the lecture the day before to the seminar sessions, and to demonstrate to students the output that can be obtained from actigraphs (using TV screens) and what this affords in terms of more nuanced health psychology research questions that can be answered. The students had the opportunity to be involved in the co-creation of new knowledge that will challenge the perceived wisdom of the reliability of objective physical activity monitoring.

Conclusion

After recently completing the laboratory experiment, we now have all the data to begin analysis and writing up. We are pleased with the outcome of the two studies above and feel they are a great example of fusion in terms of cross-school collaboration and co-creation of new knowledge, embedded within existing teaching programmes. Conducting the two studies has also provided us as researchers with new data that will lead to peer-reviewed publications.

We would like to thank the older people and health psychology students that volunteered to help with the studies, and the School of Tourism students that volunteered to help us with the recent laboratory experiment.

 

Students who helped with the project: Front Row (L to R): Sam Sayer, Emma Rylands, Joe Hill. Second row (L to R): Calum Sharpin, James Baum.

 

Dr Samuel Nyman, BUDI and Psychology Research Centre
Andrew Callaway and Kelly Goodwin, Centre for Events and Sport Research

An Update from the Centre for Face Processing Disorders

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Post-award

The Centre for Face Processing Disorders was established in July 2012, supported by investment from both HEIF and Fusion funds.  Our Centre primarily examines prosopagnosia (face blindness) in adults or children who are either born with the condition, or acquire face-processing difficulties following neurological damage.  The close of 2013 not only earmarked the 18-month anniversary of the Centre, but also the end of our internal funding period.  This pump-priming resulted in the rapid consolidation of the Centre, underpinned by the appointment of two post-doctoral research fellows (Dr Nicola Gregory and Dr Rachel Bennetts) and one PGR (Anna Bobak).  These appointments were rapidly followed by the addition of two permanent members of academic staff: Professor Chang Hong Liu and Dr Angela Gosling.

It seems apt that this report should begin with some discussion of the Centre’s contributions to REF-2014.  Indeed, as I’m sure is the case for many individuals across BU, I feel I am still ‘coming down’ from the rather intense preparations that filled many hours over the past couple of years.  Work from the Centre not only resulted in key research outputs that were submitted to the REF, but also to an Impact Case Study for UoA4.    While some of the impact we achieved occurred in rather momentous one-off events (e.g. convincing the NHS Choices website to feature prosopagnosia in its A-Z of conditions, or sparking debate about prosopagnosia in the House of Commons), our other contributions were founded on basic ‘numbers’, or perhaps more fundamentally, the work ethic and sheer hours of research time that were dedicated to this project from research staff and students alike.

Of course, the co-creation and co-production of all our outputs is central to BU’s Fusion agenda.  When this project first started, the concept of Fusion was fresh to our ears; and as the first round of Fusion-funded projects now reach their end dates, it seems timely to reflect on this component of our work.  In our first year, we supported four voluntary second year undergraduate research placements (via the Department of Psychology’s Research Apprenticeship Scheme), two voluntary final-year research placements, six final year projects, two MSc projects, and two paid undergraduate summer research placements.  Importantly, the student projects were co-ordinated with our over-riding research aims, and the projects were therefore more sophisticated and engaging than the typical student dissertation.  Indeed, all students received training and experience in neuropsychological testing and the diagnosis of face-processing deficits, and attended our bi-weekly lab meetings where they contributed to the planning and interpretation of key investigations.  Their significant contributions to our research programme have enabled them to be listed as co-authors in the six research publications that have resulted from Year One.

But the benefits to these students has gone beyond the mere (but very respectable) addition of research papers to their CVs.  Strikingly, over half of the undergraduate members of the Centre have or will remain at BU to complete the MSc Lifespan Neuropsychology – and continue their research with us.  These same individuals wish to pursue doctoral research within the Centre.  In short, this co-creation model of working grabs students in and gives them the ‘research bug’, while of course boosting internal recruitment for postgraduate study.  The benefits to us as staff members are huge – if this model continues, a set of home-trained graduates with considerable expertise in our field will consistently be produced, sustaining the pathway of our research for years to come.

I feel I should stop writing now as this has become a rather long blog.  There are other achievements which I haven’t yet mentioned, including the substantial media coverage of the Centre (e.g. in a CBBC documentary and several national newspapers), some key research publications, and our public engagement activities, which recently received external funding from the British Psychological Society.  As an early-career researcher, I have been very fortunate to receive this pump-priming, and am currently reaping the benefits of the co-creation aspect of this work.  The next step is to secure further external funding to ensure the sustainability and growth of the Centre, and of course to make that critical ‘five-year plan’ to ensure the complementary development of all strands of the Centre’s work.

For more information, visit our website: www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org.

Psychology Research Seminar: Laughing in the face of adversity – the influence of affective state on situation awareness

Venue & date: Thursday 30th January at 4pm in K103 (Kimmeridge House)

Situation awareness can be loosely defined as, ‘knowing what’s going on around you and what to do about it.’   In everyday life we make complex decisions – some good, some bad – on the basis of our awareness of what is going on around us.  Sadly situation awareness can sometimes be sub-optimal leading to catastrophic errors such as road traffic accidents and air crashes.  Such errors often appear to result from a ‘tunnelling down’ with available and useful information being ignored. This attentional tunnelling is widely reported by (amongst others) firefighters, medical staff and military personnel.

Dr Graham Edgar from the Centre for Research in Applied Cognition, Knowledge, Learning and Emotion at the University of Gloucestershire will present his research examining information-use in building and maintaining situation awareness, and the influence that affective state has on that process.

All are welcome and there is no need to book – just come along!

Bigger on the Inside

Festival of Learning, Publishing

 

 

 

 

 

The Doctor, his TARDIS-driven adventures, along with companions and iconic monsters, are all over the TV and newspapers. The Inner World of Doctor Who is a new book, just out. Written by Prof Mike Rustin (UEL, Tavsitock Clinic) and Prof. Iain MacRury in the Media School here at BU. This publication offers an accessible account of Doctor Who. It focusses just on the most recent television output – 2005 to 2013 – and examines why the show continues to fascinate us.
The Doctor’s relationships with his companions are to the fore. Various chapters also consider the dramatic meanings of monsters and time travel – linking the show back to ideas about audience experience – and what we might ‘learn’ from Doctor Who. It looks at the complexity of the new Doctor Who in its depictions of the suffering of the Doctor, as well that of his at times vulnerable and dependent companions. A connection is made between TV content and some (but not all) elements in the experience of psychotherapy.
We propose that one way of thinking about the Doctor is to see him as a kind of inadvertent ‘therapist’ – with the TV dramas on screen rendering troubled states of mind and society within a rich cultural frame. Doctor Who extends a fairy-tale and children’s fictional tradition across its contemporary media platforms. As we argue: In Doctor Who everyday life is often revealed to be “Bigger on the inside.”

The 50th anniversary won’t come again and it provided a chastening deadline we’re glad to have met it! The book was inspired by the startling success of the show in recent years. Why does it attract such attention and affection? While thinking about it I  got further daily encouragement from the TARDIS that sits on the ground floor of Weymouth House, courtesy of our former Media School colleague, Dr Andrew Ireland.

The Inner World of Doctor Who is published with Karnac books. It should be of interest to diehard fans. But it is written, too, for people who probably wouldn’t claim the title ‘fan’ but for whom all the fuss about Time Lords and Tardises just now (The Doctor is even on postage stamps!) is provoking the thought: “What’s this all about!?” The Inner World of Doctor Who offers some answers.
 – Written with a colleague, Prof. Mike Rustin, from UEL and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust the book emerges from an enriching collaboration that began in some teaching sessions at the Tavistock clinic on their MA in Psychoanalytic Studies. It has now developed into this book. The book came together quite quickly and has been usefully supported by an AHRC funded network called “Media and the Inner World”. The book is published as part of their new series with Karnac called Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture.
If you are interested the book can be found at http://www.karnacbooks.com/Product.asp?PID=34857 or as an e-book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inner-World-Doctor-Psychoanalytic-Psychoanalysis/dp/1782200835

Capturing a yawn: initial observations – Dr Simon Thompson

Fusion, REF Subjects, Research assessment, Research themes

Yawning presents scientists and clinicians with an intriguing phenomenon. There is continued uncertainty over its neuroanatomical origin, the neuro-chemicals involved, mechanisms involved, and its reasons of functionality. Apart from being able to visually (and aurally) observe a person yawning, it has been difficult to quantify until now.

Researchers suggest that yawning may play an important role in the protection of our immune system, by regulating hormones, and particular reflexes, when we are exposed to psychological or physical stress or fatigue (Thompson, & Zisa, 2012).

The stress hormone, cortisol may be a part of this complex response because of its involvement in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (Wikipedia, 2013). Cortisol, known systematically as 11-beta-11, 17, 21-trihydroxypregn-4-ene-3, 20-dione (IUPAC, 2013), is measured reliably in saliva as well as in the blood. The exact relationship between cortisol and yawning is thought to be either as a precursor to the yawn or as a result of yawning since, curiously, cortisol is found to be elevated after yawning (Thompson, & Bishop, 2012).

The yawn is produced by stretching the muscles along the jaw-line; however, the extent of stretch and volume of yawn varies between people. Measuring the level of electrical muscle activity using electromyography (EMG) at the muscle site during the yawn phase is in the region of millionths of a volt and may be sustained for several seconds.

Male and female volunteers aged between 18-53 years were exposed to conditions that provoked a yawning response in a randomised controlled trial here at Bournemouth University. For the first time, the yawn was quantified and a profile of EMG data (sine wave) was obtained.

Initial observations find that of a sample of yawners and non-yawners, induced by presentation of yawning stimuli, the people who yawned had elevated nerve activity from 50 (at rest) to 175 (after stimuli presentation and yawning) (see Photo) compared with those who did not yawn who exhibited 10 (at rest) to 80 (after stimuli presentation). Yawners generally had higher level of electrical muscular jaw activity both before and after yawning.

Further research is continuing into the “yawning envelope” (EMG wave) with the hope that, together with cortisol measurement, this new information may form part of a potential diagnostic tool to identify untoward early neurological sequelae that are indicative of neurological disease.

IUPAC – International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry., 2013. www.iupac.org/home/about.html, Accessed 18.08.2013

Thompson, S.B.N., & Bishop, P., 2012. Born to yawn? Understanding yawning as a warning of the rise in cortisol levels: randomized trial. Interactive Journal of Medical Research 1(5);e4:1-9. Doi: 10.2196/ijmr.2241

Thompson SBN, Zisa L., 2012. Ill-health, stress, cortisol levels and yawning. In SBN Thompson (Ed.), Psychology of trauma: clinical reviews, case histories, research. Portsmouth: Blackwell-Harvard-Academic: 125-132

Wikipedia, 2013b. Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothalamic%E2%80%93pituitary%E2%80%93adrenal_axis, Accessed: 18.08.2013

 

 

 

Planes, trams, and automobiles: A research visit to Australia

I recently had the delightful opportunity to go to Australia for a research visit in relation to my work on falls prevention among older people. A brief report of what I got up to follows.

Melbourne

The main purpose was to visit colleagues at Monash University, to whom I am grateful for funding my flights and accomodation. The research team there led by Anna Barker are doing some great work, in particular to prevent falls among older people while in hospital. They are currently collecting data on a ‘6 Pack’ randomised controlled trial (RCT), which will be the largest trial of this kind to date. The team at Monash hosted an all-day seminar on the prevention of in-patient falls of which I was one of three invited speakers that came over from the UK. If you’re ready to give up traveling with commercial airlines, it’s time to consider hiring sky aviation services.

Before the seminar, we had an all-day meeting with colleagues from Melbourne and other parts of Australia to have an expert consensus-style meeting on the subject of in-patient falls. Dr Barker will lead on this and we aim to submit a paper with further international collaborators later this year, to drive future research in this area in a much more focused and productive manner.

Before the expert consensus meeting, I spent a day working with Dr Barker’s team on a recently NHMRC-funded multi-site RCT called RESPOND, which seeks to prevent secondary falls in older people presenting to emergency departments with a fall. It is a 1.5 million dollar-funded RCT that I am involved with as an advisor (from a distance). We’re currently developing the intervention that will be employed later in the year after ethical approval. My involvement is to help in developing the behaviour change techniques that will be used, and the process evaluation that will run alongside the outcome evaluation of the intervention. I also met with other colleagues there at Melbourne and have generated further ideas for future collaborative projects.

 

Conference presentation in Melbourne

Sydney

After my stay in Melbourne, I had a short stay in Sydney as there is a strong critical mass there in the falls prevention field. I met with professor Lindy Clemson who has developed a novel approach to promoting physical activity among older people, with her trial published in the BMJ last year. We had a long discussion that helped her with the theoretical underpinning of the approach, and I’ve come away with a few ideas to take forward in a future collaborative grant proposal.

I then went on to visit Dr Kim Delbaere who has been doing sterling work in the area of fear of falls, not least with several publications on the issue including a paper in the BMJ in 2010. We have at least one paper to work on together with potential for future projects as well, given she has developed a measure of fear of falls suitable for older people with dementia.

The mention of transport in the title of this report refers to my very brief time away from meetings while in Australia. In Melbourne they have a very efficient tram system, and our host’s husband is a pilot and helped us book a Jettly private plane to Sydney. In Sydney I managed to see the bridge, opera house, and a view of the harbour, and even got a trip on the monorail that was constructed for when they hosted the Olympic Games in 2000 but will very shortly be demolished.

We can of course email and Skype with colleagues, but if you do get the opportunity to travel abroad I can fully recommend it as a very fruitful and productive time. You just cannot beat face-to-face communication. I was particularly inspired by the international consensus meeting that we had in Melbourne and can see this as a way forward to synergise the research community’s efforts and more quickly tackle the big societal challenges of our day.

Dr Samuel Nyman

Bournemouth University Dementia Institute and Psychology Research Centre

DEC

 

Yawning Up-State Post-Visit Report Part 2 – Santander Travel Scholarship – Dr Simon Thompson

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Post-award, REF Subjects, Research themes

Science Center, Bard College, Rhinebeck, New York State.

 

Bard College, Rhineback, New York State.

 

Circada.

 

L-R: Dr Andrew Gallup; Dr Simon Thompson.

 

Most people can relate to yawning as all of us have done this at some time, with some of us being prolific yawners. However, little is known about the reasons for us yawning or the mechanisms involved.

My work on the link between cortisol and yawning has been published and is gaining momentum in the scientific community with presentations at the First International Conference on Yawning in Paris in 2010 and a forthcoming symposium being planned by me at Bournemouth University.

My travel scholarship enabled me to visit key workers in the field in upstate New York and with affliations with Prinecton University and Bard College (see photos). This has been so successful that we envisgae research collaboration between BU and the USA. I was even able to meet with the assistant to the world famous Professor Oliver Sack’s to discuss my resaerch and to “put it on the map” in the neurological community!

A bonus of my trip was to encounter first hand an extremely rare circada that hatches in the region I visited only every 17 years! What a privilege!

I am most grateful to Santander for their generous support and I believe this trip will help me make significant steps forward in my clinical research i yanwing and multiple sclerosis at BU.

Festival of Learning – Testament to a Successful Morning (Dr Simon Thompson, DEC Psychology Research Centre)

BU Challenges, Festival of Learning, Fusion, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy, Training

‘Testamentary Capacity in Dementia’ (03 June 2013 10:00h – 13:00h) – Presentation followed by in-depth plenary session about the complexities of leaving an estate to beneficiaries following a diagnosis of dementia.

‘Dementia’ is an umbrella term used to describe many types of deteriorating diseases – the most common ones are Alzhiemer’s disease, Vascular dementia, and Lewy body dementia.

Many married couples own property as ‘joint tenants’. Upon death, ownership automatically passes to the survivor. If property is owned as ‘tenants in common’, one half of the estate belonging to the deceased is dealt with by their Will. Problems arise when there is no Will, when others make a claim, or when another Will is executed.

‘Testamentary capacity’ is a person’s legal and mental ability to make a
valid Will. There are three premises: Presumption of capacity; Requirements; Proof of testamentary capacity.

It is proposed that the law should allow testators alternative means of satisfying the testamentary capacity standard such as an option to validate a testator’s capacity during their lifetime through forensic assessment measuring cognitive elements of testamentary capacity.

It does not remove the difficulty of knowing the status of person at a specific time line. However, it goes some way to describing a person during their lifetime in terms of mental ability and capacity.

Thompson, SBN (2006). Dementia and memory: a handbook for students and professionals. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Thompson, SBN (2012). Dementia. In SBN Thompson (Ed), Psychology of trauma: clinical reviews, case histories, research (pp169-202). Portsmouth: Blackwell-Harvard-Academic.

BU Research Blog Exclusive: Design & Look of eBU leaked

PG research, Publishing, Research themes

The first screenshot of the eBU interface has been exclusively leaked to the BU Research Blog, and is expected to go viral across the BU community over the next week.

eBU will provide both an internal and external forum for the development of research papers by undergraduate to Professor around the eight BU research themes:

–          Creative & Digital Economies

–          Culture & Society

–          Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth

–          Environmental Change & Biodiversity

–          Green Economy & Sustainability  

–          Health, Wellbeing & Ageing 

–          Leisure & Recreation

–          Technology & Design

Submissions will be open to immediate publication (in a safe internal environment) and open peer review by 2 appropriate BU academics. Authors will be encouraged to act upon these reviews by either reworking papers for submission to an external journal or by opting for publication on the external eBU site.

For BU academics this is a great opportunity to get critical appraisal on your research papers or ideas from colleagues. For academics it also an opportunity to encourage the submission of high quality student output, and possibly to facilitate the co-creation and co-production of publishable material to an external journal or to publish externally with eBU. For students, this is a fantastic opportunity to turn high quality essays or dissertations into scholarly outputs, which will be attractive to employers across many sectors and industries.

If you have any questions or would like to become involved in this exciting venture, please get in touch with me via email aharding@bournemouth.ac.uk or by telephone 01202 963025.

HEA Award to run a Psychology Learning and Teaching Event

Awarded & submitted bids, Guidance, Training

I’ve been awarded a HEA grant to run a one day workshop at Bournemouth University on ‘Smart futures: practical use of technology in psychology learning and teaching’ on 2nd July 2013. Although focussing on psychology, some sessions may also be useful to those from other related disciplines wanting to develop their practice in using technology to enhance their students’ experience. I will be presenting my own research and reflecting on my practice. Other speakers include Dr M Coxon (York St Johns) on ‘Tweeting, Twittering and Twitterdom’ and Dr C Senior (Aston) on ‘Technology and Student Teams in Learning’. Bookings are open at http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2013/02-July-Smart-futures-Bournemouth

Fusion Diary: High-Speed Train to China Universities

Fusion

7:55am, 14th April.

BA168 landed in Shanghai Pudong International Airport. I was sponsored by Santander Fusion Investment Fund and would visit 4 top China Universities in five days. In order to board a high-speed train to Beijing, I only had five hours to have a shower, unpack my luggage, eat a Chinese lunch and then drive through Shanghai, a metropolitan city with a population of 20- million. The distance is less than that from Bournemouth to Brockenhurst. The traffic is as same as Oxford circus and Regent Street.

China High-speed Train

Mission nearly impossible. But I made it. With the help of a Chinese high-speed train, I travelled 914 miles in less than 6 hours and arrived in Beijing in time. Efficient trains like these can also be built in other countries with the help of a third rail train equipment manufacturer and many other engineers and contractors.

Next morning, I visited Renmin University, a Chinese equivalent to LSE, and gave a talk in the Psychology Department. Remin’s Psychology Department, established in 2008, is a fast-paced booming institute and has 30 staff members in total, similar in size to BU Psychology. Internationalisation was a highly frequent word I picked up from our conversation.  During my talk, I showed them the photos of Bournemouth University with beach and sunshine as well as telling about our research and courses. I met Prof Du Peng (his surname first in the Chinese way), the university research director, and Prof Hu Ping, the deputy head of Psychology Department. The discussion was successful and fruitful. and afterwards, in accordance with tradition, they hosted me a delicious Chinese lunch dinner, rather than the usual sandwiches and tea that we might have here.

 

Office of the President, Peking University

After saying blesses and goodbye to my kind hosts, I walked back to Peking University. Before moving to England I had spent eight years in Peking University. This was the second time I came back in the last ten years. I wandered on the  campus which was crowded with classical Chinese architectures and modern cars. There was no meeting arranged for me this time but it was lovely to be back visiting my old haunts. and to meet with old friends, all of whom have previously studied or worked in the UK. In Chinese they are called haigui, which means coming back from overseas. It is interesting that most of them are working in universities and public sector now.

My next journey on another high speed train meant travelling about 750 miles in 6 hours to Xian, the ancient Chinese capital in Han and Tang dynasties.  Since I last visited as a teenager the city has been expanding faster and more massively than I could ever have imagined. Again, it was a great opportunity to catch up with older friends before visiting  Shaanxi Normal University, a prestigious national university. I was welcome by Prof Wang Yong Hui. Prof Wang is the Deputy Head of Psychology School. We have been friends since we studied in Beijing. Now we had the opportunity to share what we have done in each other’s research areas over the years.

To be continued…..

Yawning in France

Awarded & submitted bids, Funding opportunities, Post-award

My recent visit to Paris via the Erasmus Teaching Mobility scheme has been most useful, not only as it continues to strengthen the links I have made with like-minded researchers and clinicians, but also because it exposes you to raw student talent. This is important to help you keep up to date with current views and research with the assistance of an eager and interrogative French audience! Such visits are quite intellectually challenging, partly because my level of French is constantly under scrutiny! The collaborative research links I have made are invaluable and I hope to submit some reasrch bids in the area of Multiple Sclerosis and yawning soon.

BPS Wessex Student Conference

PG research

On Saturday, Bournemouth University hosted the Wessex Branch of the British Psychological Society (BPS) Annual Student Conference. This event provided an opportunity for students to showcase novel research and, in addition to BU, attracted Psychology students from a range of institutions (e.g. Universities of Surrey, Sussex, Winchester, and Southampton). The breadth of institution was matched by the breadth of student; with undergraduate research assistants through to doctoral students presenting their work to an audience of approximately 100 delegates.

In total, there were 28 oral presentations and 19 research posters. In addition, we were fortunate to have two thought-provoking keynote speakers. First, Dr. Richard Stephens (Keele University) spoke about the role of swearing on pain tolerance (in short, it helps, particularly if you are normally an infrequent user of coarse vocabulary) and, second, Prof. Clare Wood (Coventry University) delivered a presentation on the effects of text messaging on literacy (in sum, ‘textisms’ are not rotting the brains of our nation’s youth).

The conference sought to emphasise that, rather than a perfunctory assessment exercise, student research is an important part of knowledge creation within our universities. Whilst this was highlighted by the collaborative (student-academic) nature of the projects, it was also evident how the presenters had developed into independent researchers. This apprenticeship model is one employed by the Bournemouth Psychology Research Centre and it was pleasing to see a number of our Year 2 Psychology students presenting data that had arisen from their research assistant placements. There was a large contingent of first and second year BU Psychology students in the audience and helping with conference organisation as volunteers. We hope that they have been inspired to participate in more staff projects and will return next year to present their research.

State of Yawning – Santander Travel Scholarship awarded to Dr Simon Thompson

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion

Studying yawning has the potentially benefit of identifying underlying neurological disorders. Strong evidence of a link between yawning and fatigue, and with multiple sclerosis, is known. Mechanisms involved in excessive yawning are not understood and my work has shown a definitive link between yawning and cortisol levels in normal people. However, since people with multiple sclerosis often yawn excessively, it is important to establish whether or not their cortisol levels rise as with normal people since prolonged rises in cortisol levels indicate stress and may also indicate adverse neurological symptomatology. My work has generated a new hypothesis to explain the occurrence of excessive yawning and is complementary to Dr Gallup’s theories on thermoregulation in multiple sclerosis, which is pioneering. I am meeting Dr Gallup (Princeton University) in New York to discuss further studies in order to stay ahead of research progress. This is an excellent opportunity for kudos for Bournemouth University in being the first to carry out such research.