School of Psychology Events

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Barbara Mullen (Curtin University)
2025-09-19 15:00 - 16:00 (Australia/Sydney)
Prof Barbara Mullen (Curtin University)

Title: Beyond individual behaviour change: Can we use the behaviour change techniques successful in changing health behaviour to change behaviour in health professional led interventions?

Abstract:

Drawing on her research over the past 25 years Professor Mullan will explore behaviour change in health psychology. Starting with an overview of using theory to predict behaviour, she will demonstrate how advances in theory allowed for the successful development of interventions to change behaviour at an individual level. Using research across a range of behaviours, including physical activity, nutrition, adherence, sleep, alcohol consumption, in diverse populations (e.g. people with eating disorders, diabetes, stroke, and obesity) and conditions (e.g. cancer, autoimmune conditions) she will demonstrate a range of interventions where behaviour was successfully changed (and not so successfully). The final section will explore how these individual-level techniques can be adapted for use by health professionals—nurses, dietitians, psychologists, and pharmacists, answering the question of whether we shift from isolated success stories to widespread, sustainable behaviour change across entire populations? Professor Mullan’s work is especially relevant in today’s healthcare landscape, where chronic illness and lifestyle-related conditions are on the rise. Her approach blends rigorous theory with practical application, making her insights valuable for both researchers and health care professionals.

Bio:

Professor Mullan is a Professor of Health Psychology, in the School of Population Health at Curtin University. Professor Mullan completed her undergraduate studies in psychology at University College Dublin, where she then completed her Masters degree. She completed her PhD in health psychology at Cardiff Metropolitan University. She became a Registered Health Psychologist with the Health & Care Professions Council UK in 2007. She has worked in health psychology for more than 25 years including at the University of Birmingham, the University of Sydney, and Curtin University. Her PhD was the first to use psychological theory to predict safe food handling behaviour in consumers and she has remained a world leader in this important research area ever since. This work has had important implications for theory, practice and policy. With her team she has pioneered using theory and behaviour change techniques in interventions to change behaviour, across a range of behaviours. Her recent research has used these interventions in large population scale interventions to change behaviour in interventions using health professionals.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Jaimie Northam (USYD) & Priya Vaughan (USYD)
2025-09-26 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Jaimie Northam (USYD) & Priya Vaughan (USYD)

Title: A new age for youth mental health: practical considerations for research and practice

Abstract:

Youth mental health has been recognised as research priority by the Australian government with the goal of reducing long term harm and social and economic costs. Lived experience participation and engagement has also been emphasised to ensure interventions and outputs are meaningful and relevant to young people. However, any research that engages youth must acknowledge that young people have distinct experiences and needs to those of children and adults. Young people are more independent than children, and capable of great creativity and unique perspectives. But they are not yet adults and require varying levels of parental and societal support. As a result, young people have unique needs for psychological interventions, and how they’re engaged in research processes. How do we know we are getting their involvement right? And how can we involve young people in research in a meaningful way that drives our research, and also empowers and strengthens young people’s mental health? In this talk, we argue that there are ways to meaningfully engage young people in research that benefits us as researchers, them as developing individuals, and the collective society.

Dr Northam will present recent data regarding young people’s attitudes to mental health help-seeking and how this work is helping to inform development of a new digital mental health tool specifically for 12 to 17-year-olds. Dr Vaughan will share reflections about the co-production of MyBRANCHES, a digital, self-management tool for young people (16+) preparing to discharge from an Early Intervention in Psychosis Service. She will reflect on what the co-production process looked like ‘in real life’ (as opposed to the neat frameworks she’d seen in journal articles) and share learnings and challenges. Drawing on co-design and co-production approaches, Jaimie and Priya will close with an interactive discussion with the audience so we can collectively explore the steps we can take to better include our stakeholders in research.

Bios:

Dr Jaimie Northam is a Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist. She has been practicing as a psychologist working with young people for over 15 years and is passionate about supporting them and their parents meet the unique needs of this life stage. Currently, her work is based in the Child Behaviour Research Clinic where she provides treatment, supervision and conducts research focused on improving childhood mental health outcomes.

Dr Priya Vaughan is a Research Fellow at the Central Clinical School (The University of Sydney) and at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course. Priya’s research focuses on collaborative and participatory research with people with lived experience. Recent research has focused on experiences of psychosis and schizophrenia, climate emotions, and discrimination experienced by people with experience of both disability and mental distress.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Graeme Hoddinott (USYD)
2025-10-10 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Graeme Hoddinott (USYD)

Title: Applying psychology (socio-behavioural science) to tuberculosis – acceptability, value, and preferences

Abstract:

When I was a psychology student, I thought I was going to be ‘a psychologist’. That’s not what happened. Instead, I trace a journey of 20 years working alongside medical clinicians, epidemiologists, and public health implementers. I have leveraged my expertise in understanding people’s experiences and how these experiences interface with history, context, social systems, and health systems, to turn my training in psychology to a required skill for policy-impactful health research. I share five examples from the field of mixed-method, multi-disciplinary projects, mostly on tuberculosis and children. And I invite discussion on lessons-learned toward opportunities and conceptualisations of applied health psychology.

Bio:

Graeme trained in psychology in South Africa. He is now a senior lecturer in global health at the Sydney School of Public Health. He is also an extraordinary associate professor in paediatrics and child health (Stellenbosch University, South Africa), and an African Academy of Sciences “ARISE” Fellow hosted by the Group for Research in Infectious Diseases (GRID) at the University of Namibia. He will tell us about his research in the presentation.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Sabina Kleitman (USYD)
2025-10-17 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Sabina Kleitman (USYD)

Title: TBA

Abstract:

We make thousands of decisions every day, often without realising how complex and costly they can be. In this talk, I will provide an overview of several research programs currently underway in the CODES Lab, with a focus on decision-making, meta-reasoning, and cognitive fitness.

Within the meta-reasoning framework, our group is the first to examine individual differences in giving-up behaviours. The decision to give up is not simply a failure but a metacognitive strategy—one that can reduce errors and resource costs during problem solving. Across a series of studies, we have shown that people give up in systematic ways, and that some strategies are adaptive while others are maladaptive for performance.

I will also discuss our work on collective decision making, highlighting the role of metacognitive confidence and in-group communication in shaping group outcomes.

Finally, I will share findings from our research on cognitive fitness, examining the factors that support mental resilience, adaptability, and sustained performance under pressure.

Together, these programs advance our understanding of how individuals and groups manage the demands of decision-making, and how metacognition and cognitive fitness can be leveraged to improve performance in everyday and high-stakes contexts.

Bio:

Dr Sabina Kleitman is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney, and she is a director of the CODES lab at the School of Psychology. She researches psychological traits underlying decision-making, meta-reasoning, cognitive fitness, resilience, and mental well-being, and how extreme and uncertain conditions affect them. She and her team also develop or assist with developing novel assessment and research tools, and methodologies of significance to various end-users, including Australian Defence.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Daniel Feuerriegel (University of Melbourne)
2025-10-24 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Daniel Feuerriegel (University of Melbourne)

Title: Where are the prediction errors? Three tests for expectancy effects on visual evoked responses

Abstract:

We can rapidly learn repeating patterns in our environment. These learned patterns are often used to form expectations about future sensory events. Several influential predictive coding models posit that stimulus-evoked neural responses in the visual system are reduced when an expected stimulus appears (expectation suppression). However, there is currently scant electrophysiological evidence for genuine expectation suppression in the visual system when relevant confounds are taken into account. To provide stronger tests for expectation suppression in the visual system, we performed three predictive cueing experiments (n=48, n=48, n=60) while recording electroencephalographic (EEG) data. Participants learned cue-stimulus associations during a training session and were then exposed to the same cue-stimulus pairs in a subsequent experiment. Experiment 1 presented faces, whereas experiments 2 and 3 presented oriented gratings. Across the three experiments we did not find evidence that expectations influenced event-related potentials in the first 300ms after stimulus onset (i.e., during afferent visual responses). These findings do not support predictive coding-based accounts that specify reduced prediction error signalling when perceptual expectations are fulfilled. Our results instead highlight the role of other hypothesised processes that allow our minds to adapt to our environments, which do not appeal to prediction error signalling modulations.

Bio:

Dr. Daniel Feuerriegel is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Head of the Prediction and Decision-Making Lab at the University of Melbourne. He uses a variety of neuroimaging techniques in combination with psychophysics and computational modelling to investigate how decision-making and visual perception are implemented within the human brain. His team uses high temporal resolution recording methods, such as scalp and stereotactic EEG, to track the formation of decisions as they unfold over time. His research group is also interested in how our past experience and expectations about future events shape responses of stimulus-selective neurons within the visual system.

Psychology Colloquium: A/Prof Yoel Inbar (University of Toronto)
2025-10-31 15:00 - 16:00
A/Prof Yoel Inbar (University of Toronto)

Title: Moral Language Use By U.S. Political Elites

Abstract:

Politicians on the left and right vary in the extent to which they moralize social issues. Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) posits five moral foundations said to constitute the basic building blocks of morality across cultures: the “individualizing” foundations of harm and fairness, and the “binding” foundations of ingroup loyalty, respect for authority, and purity. Past self-report studies suggest that conservatives endorse the binding foundations more strongly than liberals do. However, research does not consistently show that moral language use differs by ideology as predicted by MFT. I’ll present a series of studies in which we use computer-aided natural language analyses to uncover moral language used by U.S. Members of Congress. I’ll discuss differences between liberal and conservative politicians in how much and what kind of moral language they use, and how this changes across time and different issues.

Bio:

Yoel Inbar is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough and director of the Morality, Affect, and Politics (MAP) Lab. His research is dedicated to uncovering the basic processes underlying moral thinking and applying this knowledge to understand people’s ideology, beliefs, and reasoning.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Jessica Flake (University of British Columbia)
2025-11-07 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Jessica Flake (University of British Columbia)

Title: Methodological Research Needs Methodological Reform Too

Abstract:

Psychology is in a period of methodological reform. Researchers are rethinking their practices, sharing their data, and trying out registered reports. In this open science era, my work has focused on the role of measurement practices. I’ll provide some background as to how that previous metascience and psychometric research in the context of replication studies led me to discover two related problems. First, even as registration becomes common, we lack practices to analysis plan for complex models and to ensure their transparent reporting and reproducibility. Second, current methodological research does not address this because it does not focus on how to navigate the garden of forking paths and quantify the uncertainty in results that comes from reasonable analytical flexibility. In fact, methodological research seeks to increase the size of the garden of forking paths! These problems prevent the uptake of open science practices and threaten the validity of research results. I’ll preview my on-going work to develop research synthesis methods for methodologies and ways of integrating multiverse analysis with metascience to quantify analytical uncertainty. I’ll discuss how applied and meta researchers can consider decision making in analysis pipelines as a unique contributor to the uncertainty of results and ideas for correcting for it.

Bio:

Dr. Flake developed an interest in psychology and statistics as an undergraduate at Northern Kentucky University and went on to complete a PhD in Measurement, Evaluation, and Assessment from the University of Connecticut in 2015. She recently joined the faculty in the Quantitative Methods Area of the Department of Psychology at University of British Columbia, after having been an Associate Professor at McGill University. Her lab works on applied problems in psychological measurement and psychometrics with an emphasis on reproducibility and replicability. She was a founding member of the Psychological Science Accelerator, a distributed laboratory network of over 1,000 researchers, serving as the Assistant Director of the Data and Methods Committee from 2018 to 2023. She continues to work on methodological challenges for big team science and psychometric methods for complex data structures. Currently she is an Associate Editor at Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science and Psychological Methods. Her recent and future work is considering how open science practices like registered reports and multiverse analysis can be further developed for latent variable models.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Ed Awh (University of Chicago)
2026-02-27 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Ed Awh (University of Chicago)

Title: Content-independent pointers mediate storage in working memory

Abstract:

Although past neural studies of working memory (WM) have focused on stimulus-specific activity that tracks the stored feature values, a separate line of evidence has revealed neural signals that track the number of items in WM, independent of the contents of those items. Thus, a common neural signature of WM load has been identified for highly distinct visual features, and even across visual and auditory sensory modalities. Our working hypothesis is that these content-independent load signals reflect the operation of spatiotemporal “pointers” that enable the binding of stored items to the surrounding event context, a process that is critical for precise access online memories despite high levels of proactive interference. This hypothesis predicts that pointer deployment is a key limiting factor for WM capacity. To test this prediction, we applied representational similarity analysis (RSA) to EEG data to determine the number of pointers deployed across set sizes that ranged from 1 to 8 items. We observed a “neural load” function that rises with increasing numbers of stored items, while controlling for differences in sensory energy and spatial attention. Critically, this function differed sharply as a function of individual differences in WM capacity. Subjects with higher capacity showed a monotonic rise in the number of pointers deployed that leveled off at higher set sizes. By contrast, low capacity subjects showed an initial rise followed by a sharp decline in the number of pointers deployed at higher set sizes. This empirical pattern dovetails with past behavioral and neural studies that have documented increased costs for low capacity observers as the number of memoranda exceeds capacity. We conclude that content-independent indexing is a core component of individual differences in WM ability.

Bio:

I’m a cognitive neuroscientist who received a doctoral degree from the University of Michigan, training with Drs. John Jonides and Edward Smith. I then spent 2 years at UC San Diego, working with Dr. Hal Pashler, and Dr. Steve Hillyard. I took my first professor position at the University of Oregon in 1999, where I spent 16 years and developed a close collaboration with Dr. Ed Vogel. In 2015, Vogel and I both took positions at the University of Chicago where I still reside. My core research interests focus on working memory and attention, with an eye towards the intertwined nature of these constructs. I’ve been very interested in the sharp capacity limits that characterize working memory performance, and we have recently proposed that those limits may relate to limits on content-independent operations that serve to bind item representations to the observer’s current context. My talk will focus on the evidence supporting this broad hypothesis.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Luigi Fontana (University of Sydney)
2026-03-06 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Luigi Fontana (University of Sydney)

Title: Promoting healthy longevity through lifestyle medicine: biological and behavioural mechanisms

Abstract:

Chronic diseases are often perceived as an unavoidable consequence of genetics or chance. Yet converging evidence shows that a large proportion of cardiometabolic disease, type 2 diabetes, and many cancers is preventable, and that the years lived with disability can be dramatically reduced through mechanism-focused lifestyle interventions. Modern healthcare has excelled at prolonging survival after disease onset, but too often this extends years characterized by multimorbidity, polypharmacy, reduced independence, and escalating costs.1

This lecture synthesizes human and translational evidence showing how lifestyle medicine can extend healthspan by targeting fundamental biological pathways that drive aging and chronic disease risk.2-4 Key interventions include optimizing diet quality and energy balance (e.g., a Mediterranean-like, minimally processed, fiber-rich dietary pattern), regular endurance and resistance exercise, and avoidance of smoking and harmful alcohol use.1, 5

Importantly, the effectiveness of these interventions in both clinical trials and real-world settings depends on adherence and long-term compliance, which are influenced by psychological and behavioral factors that remain incompletely understood. I will briefly discuss how improving health literacy—particularly through education—may help shape health behaviors and strengthen prevention. Finally, I will outline how integrating lifestyle medicine into proactive, personalized care can reduce disparities and support sustainable healthcare systems while aligning human and planetary health goals.6, 7

Key references:

1. Cagigas ML, Twigg SM and Fontana L. Ten tips for promoting cardiometabolic health and slowing cardiovascular aging. Eur Heart J 2024; 45: 1094-1097. DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehad853.

2. Green CL, Lamming DW and Fontana L. Molecular mechanisms of dietary restriction promoting health and longevity. Nature reviews Molecular cell biology 2022; 23: 56-73. 2021/09/15. DOI: 10.1038/s41580-021-00411-4.

3. Cagigas ML, De Ciutiis I, Masedunskas A, et al. Dietary and pharmacological energy restriction and exercise for healthspan extension. Trends Endocrinol Metab 2025; 36: 521-545. 20250502. DOI: 10.1016/j.tem.2025.04.001.

4. Fontana L, Partridge L and Longo VD. Extending healthy life span—from yeast to humans. science 2010; 328: 321-326.

5. Tosti V, Bertozzi B and Fontana L. Health benefits of the mediterranean diet: metabolic and molecular mechanisms. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A 2017; 73: 318-326.

6. Cheng K and Fontana L. Investing in value-based primary care: a pathway to sustainable healthcare. Eur Heart J 2024 20240710. DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehae404.

7. Fontana L, Fasano A, Chong YS, et al. Transdisciplinary research and clinical priorities for better health. PLoS medicine 2021; 18: e1003699. 20210727. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003699.

Bio:

Luigi Fontana is an internationally recognized physician scientist and one of the world’s leaders in the field of nutrition, metabolism and healthy longevity in humans. His pioneering studies on the effects of dietary restriction in humans have opened a new area of nutrition-related research that holds tremendous promise for the prevention of age-related chronic diseases and for the understanding of the biology of human aging.

Professor Fontana is the Leonard P. Ullmann Chair of Translational Metabolic Health at the Charles Perkins Centre, where he directs the Charles Perkins Centre Royal Prince Alfred Clinic and the Health for Life Research, Clinical & Educational Program. He is also a Professor of Medicine and Nutrition in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney and a Clinical Academic in the Department of Endocrinology at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

Professor Fontana was a Senior Scientist at the Italian NIH (ISS) and a Professor of Medicine and Nutritional Sciences at Washington University in St.Louis (USA), and co-director of the Longevity Research Program at Washington University. Fontana graduated with highest honors from the Verona University Medical School (1994), where he completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine (1999). He also received a Ph.D. in Metabolism and Clinical Pharmacology from the University of Padua Medical School (2003).

Professor Fontana has published over 180 manuscripts in prestigious journals including Science, Cell, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, BMJ, CA Clinical Journal cancer, Nature Reviews Mol Cell Biol, Cell Metabolism, Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol, Circulation, Journal American College of Cardiology, and PNAS ; 96.4% of his papers are in the top 10% most-cited journals (Google scholar total citations >39,000; h-index 90). He has been invited to present his work at international conferences and top medical schools and research institutes around the world, including Harvard University, Cambridge University, Yale University, Universitè Paris “Pierre et Marie Curie”, Max Plank Institute of Aging, Baylor College of Medicine, Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, National University of Singapore among others.

Dr. Fontana’s is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the 2009 American Federation Aging Research (AFAR) Breakthroughs in Gerontology Award and the 2011 Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, the 2016 Vincent Cristofalo Award of the American Federation Aging Research, 2021 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence of the University of Sydney, 2022 Honorary Member of the Italian Association of Hospital Gastroenterologists, 2022 Ordinary Non-resident Member of the Italian Academy of Medical and Surgical Sciences of the National Society of Sciences in Naples, and 2023 Ordinary Non-resident Member of of the Italian Pontanian Academy of Naples (founded in 1458). He was a Scientific Member of the Board of Directors of the American Aging Association (2014-2019), and since 2016, he is the Editor-in-Chief of ‘Nutrition and Healthy Aging’ and Associated Editor of ‘Geroscience’.

Professor Fontana believes that the time has come for a change in the conversation about chronic disease to a refreshed and repurposed model of health care, which emphasizes the power of mechanism based prevention and education to change potential to actual outcomes. Fontana is also an environmentalist. He wrote several highly-cited perspective articles and book chapters with Daniel Kammen, Walter Willett and Nicoletta Batini on the beneficial role of efficient use of energy and food in promoting human, environmental, and planetary health, and sustainable economic development. Fontana and colleagues believe that it is possible to substantially enhance human and environmental health, societal wealth and well-being, but this requires a profound transformation in the way we live, and a new prevention- and environment-centred healthcare, agricultural, industrial and economic system. They argues that most of the knowledge and technology to transform the world and begin a new industrial revolution already exist today. We only need to relinquish the idea of producing more energy, food, and other products at lower cost in favor of a new paradigm that opts for less but high-quality energy, food and materials for a healthier life and environment. They also claims that “both individual and societal wealth, happiness, and well-being do not depend merely on the acquisition of material goods and on economic growth, but are powered by our physical and psychological health, the quality of life and the richness of our social relationships, and foremost by the health of the environment that supports all life on earth, our Natural Capital that must be preserved”.

Major Media attention

Quoted in The New York Times, “Food for Holiday Thought: Eat Less, Live to 140?” by David Hochman, by David Hochman, Nov 23, 2003

Profiled on a NHK special documentary “Challenge the aging: You can live longer”, 2004

Quoted in The Washington Post, “Seeking the Low-Calorie Fountain of Youth: Severely Restricted Diets May Slow Aging Process” by Rob Stein, May 4 2004.

Quoted in Science “Lean, Hungry, and Healthy” by Constance Holden, Apr 23 2004(Science 2004;304:514)

Quoted in New Scientist “Eat less and keep disease at bay” by Anil Ananthaswamy, Apr 24, 2004 (New Scientist 2004;182:2444)

Featured in the Korean documentary “Secrets of Living, Aging, Illness and Death ” by Mia Lee (Korean Broadcasting Systems), 2005

Quoted in The Times of London, “Eat less — and live to 130” by David Mattin, Oct 3, 2005

Profiled in an Italian TV documentary on nutrition and longevity “Calorie restriction and aging” by Piero Angela (“SuperQuark” series), 2005

Quoted in The Wall Street Journal, “Reducing Your Daily Calories by 40%: The Science Behind ‘Starvation’ Diets”, by Tara Parker-Pope, Jan 31 2006.

Quoted in The Washington Post, “High Protein Diets May Boost Cancer Risk” by Steven Reinberg, Dec 7, 2006

Featured in the BBC4 documentary “Live longer: Caloric restrictions and ageing of the heart”, 2007

Quoted in Newsweek, “Never say die”, by Anne Underwood, Dec 12 2008.

Quoted in The New York Times Magazine “The Calorie-Restriction Experiment” by JON GERTNER, Oct 7 2009.

Quoted in the Los Angeles Time, “Permanent diet may equal longer life” by Karen Kaplan, July 9, 2009

Quoted in the Time Magazine, “Health Checkup: How to Live 100 Years – Eat Less, Live Longer?”, by Bryan Walsh, Feb 11 2010.

Quoted in New Scientist “Eat less, live longer?” by Laura Cassiday, Jun 3, 2010

Time Magazine – “9 Healthy Snacks That Prevent Overeating”, by Markham Heid, Aug 11, 2016.

Featured in the BBC2 Horizon documentary Eat, Fast & Live Longer by Michael J. Mosley, 2012

Featured in the ABC ‘Catalyst’ documentary “Staying Younger For Longer” by Jayne Parker, 2019

Featured in the ABC ‘Catalyst’ documentary “The Truth about Fasting”, 2021

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Agnieszka Tymula (University of Sydney)
2026-03-13 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Agnieszka Tymula (University of Sydney)

Title: Rationally Selected Utility – A New Theory of Choice

Abstract:

Traditional prescriptive decision theories from Pascal’s to Expected Utility have struggled to explain inconsistent human choices, leading to predictive models like Prospect Theory. This paper introduces a novel approach to understand why these behaviors occur, reconciling these observed “irrationalities” with a simple rational objective. Here we propose that the human nervous system, faced with limited cognitive capacity (a finite representational precision for the representation of reward value), optimally selects a task-appropriate utility function to either maximize long-run average earnings or to minimize errors. We argue that the utility functions we have measured are tools, sculpted by knowledge of the choice environment’s probabilistic structure and the decision-maker’s precision level, for optimally achieving a rational objective. Our results show that almost every experimentally observed utility function can be described as a near-optimal tool for achieving a maximization of objective earnings (a goal abandoned since Bernoulli) or for minimizing errors. We quantify the specific gains that result from adding cognitive capacity and find that these gains are quite small as long as the utility function is correctly adjusted to cognitive capacity. Our research provides a novel framework that offers a testable and foundational explanation for why human and animal decision-makers evolved the puzzling range of utility functions and risk attitudes that have been widely observed.

Bio:

TBA

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Phillippa Diedrichs (University of the West of England)
2026-03-20 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Phillippa Diedrichs (University of the West of England)

Title: Beyond journal articles: How research psychologists, industry and civil society joined forces to reach 140 million young people with evidence-based body image interventions.

Abstract:

Industries have long shaped body image, appearance ideals, and wellbeing, yet a persistent gap remains between scientific discovery and real-world application. Brands and businesses struggle to access academic expertise and evidence-based tools; researchers, meanwhile, often lack the platforms, resources, connections, and sometimes the confidence or appetite to translate their findings into practice. In the meantime, young people continue to be shaped by appearance pressures that harm their health and curtail their relationships, aspirations, and opportunities. The solution lies not in more research alone, but in a fundamentally different model of knowledge translation, one built on disruptive innovation, ethical industry partnerships, and task-shifting to community-led delivery.

Drawing on ten years of work spanning academia, global brands, civil society, and policy, this talk traces how evidence-based body image interventions were designed, scaled, and delivered to more than 140 million young people worldwide. It examines the realities of cross-sector collaboration candidly, including the processes, tensions, and hard-won lessons, so that researchers and practitioners can consider how similar approaches might strengthen the impact of their own work.

Bio:

Professor Phillippa Diedrichs, PhD, is a social scientist on a mission to create a world where no one is held back by how they look, their gender or identity. She’s an internationally recognised psychologist, researcher, author, and speaker specialising in body image, mental health and inclusion. Phillippa is a Professor of Psychology at the Centre for Appearance Research, UWE Bristol and founder of EVERYBODY Consulting, partnering with brands like Dove, Nike and Instagram to challenge beauty norms and drive social change. Her best-selling teen guide, The Body Confidence Book, is now published in five languages.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Philip Jean-Richard Dit Bressel (University of NSW)
2026-03-27 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Philip Jean-Richard Dit Bressel (University of NSW)

Title: A cross-species paradigm for exploring persistent detrimental behaviour

Abstract:

A basic precept in psychology is that actions with positive consequences are repeated while actions with negative consequences are avoided. However, individuals vary immensely in their tendency to cease detrimental actions, with many persisting in self-destructive behaviour. Tasks used to study this often fail to reveal psychological roots for these inter-individual differences. We have sought to address this via rodent and human versions of a conditioned punishment task. Across studies, we have found that avoidance of negative consequences is bimodally distributed across individuals. We have found these differences in avoidance are not readily attributable to differences in appetitive or aversive motivation, nor differences in behavioural control. Rather, avoidance differences were driven by failures in Action-Punisher learning, indicating an overlooked source of maladaptive choices. Factors that interact with these tendencies, broader implications, and future directions will be discussed.

Bio:

Dr Philip Jean-Richard Dit Bressel is a Senior Lecturer at UNSW School of Psychology. His lab investigates the psychobiology of learning, decision-making, and behaviour, with a special focus on how we learn and make decisions about actions with negative consequences. His research program leverages complex behavioural tasks across species, precision neuroscience techniques (in vivo pharmacology, optical and genetic approaches for real-time neural measurement and manipulation), and advanced analysis methods.

Thriving With and Beyond Cancer: A World Psycho-Oncology Day Webinar
2026-04-09 13:00 - 14:00
Beyond the Clinical: Supporting Mental Health in Cancer CareCancer care is about more than just treatment, scans, and surgery. In honour of World Psycho-Oncology Day, the Psycho-Oncology Cooperative Research Group (PoCoG) invites you to a special webinar: Thriving With and Beyond Cancer.

Join us on Thursday 9 April to discover how psycho-social and supportive care clinical trials and implementation research are transforming the way we support the emotional and psychological needs of patients and their families.

This session is open to all – clinicians, researchers, students, and community members alike.

REGISTER HERE

When: Thursday 9 April, 1pm – 2 pm AEST

Where: Online (link provided upon registration)

Host: PoCoG (School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney)

CANCELLED: Psychology Colloquium: Prof Mark Dadds (University of Sydney)
2026-04-17 15:00 - 16:00
UNFORTUNATELY, MARK’S COLLOQUIUM HAS HAD TO BE CANCELLED AND WILL BE RESCHEDULED FOR LATER IN THE YEAR.

Prof Mark Dadds (University of Sydney)

Title: What is it to discipline a child; what should it be? Evidence, myths, and the moral high ground

Abstract:

Parental discipline of children is central to children’s moral development but is also the context for most abuse and violence. Time-out (TO) is a widely used parental discipline strategy developed as an alternative to physical punishment for children with behavioural problems and is now the 2nd most common discipline strategy. Despite strong research support, concerns have spread widely regarding adverse impact on child mental health (CMH) in part driven by evidence of widespread variability in how TO is implemented, and also with regard to its use with child from trauma and adversity backgrounds. I will present the results of several studies using a new measure of procedural implementation of TO by parents of children aged 2-8 years, to examine the relationship between use and implementation of TO and child mental health, attachment, moral development, and other outcomes. Data will include the first surveys of young adults who grew up in the Time-out generation. Overall, the findings suggest that TO is ……. you’ll need to come to hear this bit!

Bio:

Mark Dadds is Director of Growing Minds Australia, Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney and Founding Co-Director of the Child Behaviour Research Clinic, which develops state-of-the-art treatments for children and adolescents with MH problems. He has received over $17M of NHMRC, MRFF and philanthropic funding since 2020. He has developed and directed several national intervention programs for children, youth, and their families, at risk for MH problems. His Integrated Family Intervention for Child Conduct Disorder (with D.Hawes) is implemented throughout the world in the form of a tertiary treatment and since 2020, online as Parentworks and FamilyMan, both developed in partnership with the Movember Foundation. The ABC 3-part documentary of his approach to treating early onset child mental health problems led to him being awarded the 2021 Inaugural APS Award for Media Engagement with Science. Other awards include Early Career Award from the Division of Scientific Affairs of the Australian Psychological Society, the Ian Matthew Campbell Award for Excellence in Clinical Psychology, Distinguished Career Award of the Australian Association of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy, the Eric Taylor Award for Translational Research into Practice, Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, UK, 2020, and in 2021, the APS President’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology. He has authored 4 books and over 280 papers on child and family psychology receiving over 39,000 citations in total and over 11,000 since 2020 on Google Scholar, and has given invited keynote addresses and skills training workshops to international audiences throughout the world. In 2021 he established Australia’s first Clinical Trials Network in Child and Youth Mental Health funded by the federal government and tasked with developing innovative methods for identifying and responding to early mental health problems in children. This CTN has since 2021 developed Australia’s first network of Early and Midcareer researchers in child and youth mental health, established over 14 flagship, funded and endorsed new research trials, established core methods support teams in Health Economics, Lived Experience and Co-design, Translation, and Statistical methods, and engaged ~100 research collaborators in child and youth mental health.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Natalie Matosin (University of Sydney)
2026-04-24 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Natalie Matosin (University of Sydney)

Title: Decoding the impacts of stress on the human brain

Abstract:

Severe psychological stress is a global issue. The accumulation of recent geopolitical, environmental, and health crises has highlighted that stress has broad and substantial ramifications for global mental health. In this presentation, Dr. Natalie Matosin will present cutting-edge research on how stress and trauma affect the cytoarchitecture of the human brain, and how through studying this process, the lab is defining new brain cell types that have not been described before.

Bio:

Dr. Natalie Matosin is a Sydney Horizon and Al & Val Rosenstrauss Senior Research Fellow in the School of Medical Sciences, and Director of the MINDS Lab in the Charles Perkins Centre. With over a decade of international training in neurobiology, Natalie specialises in advanced techniques to explore brain complexities and disorders. Her lab’s pioneering research in spatial and single-cell histology aims to improve diagnostics and develop new treatments for mental health conditions, driving solutions from lab research to clinical applications.

CANCELLED: Psychology Colloquium: Learning, Education, and Assessment Research Network (Psychology) (USYD)
2026-05-01 15:00 - 16:00
UNFORTUNATELY, THE L.E.A.R.N.’S COLLOQUIUM HAS HAD TO BE CANCELLED AND WILL HOPEFULLY BE RESCHEDULED FOR LATER IN THE YEAR.

L.E.A.R.N. (Learning, Education, and Assessment Research Network) (Psychology) (USYD)

Title: The discipline that couldn’t explain itself: Narrative identity and Psychology’s crisis of coherence

Abstract:

Anyone familiar with Psychology’s history will recognise a discipline shaped by fragmentation, competing paradigms, and unresolved questions about Psychology’s identity and purpose. These tensions have become more pronounced in contemporary debates about open science, interdisciplinarity, decolonisation, and Psychology’s standing beyond being ‘just’ a science. In this presentation, we argue that Psychology continues to face an identity problem that is at once theoretical, pedagogical, and professional. We situate the problem historically, tracing enduring tensions between experimental science, applied practice, and humanistic approaches. Drawing on McAdams’ narrative identity framework, we propose that Psychology’s pluralism can be understood not only as intellectual diversity, but also as narrative fragmentation.

We then examine how Psychology’s narrative is encountered by students in undergraduate education. Undergraduate curricula often present Psychology as a collection of disparate topic areas, with limited explicit guidance on how these areas connect to one another or to students’ emerging professional identities. We argue that this lack of a shared disciplinary narrative has important negative consequences for student engagement, sense of belonging, and their understanding of Psychology as a coherent and meaningful field of study.

We then present findings examining first-year students’ perceptions of the implicit and explicit narratives operating within our large introductory Psychology courses. Our findings reveal systematic mismatches between what we teach within the scientist-practitioner model and student narratives potentially shaped by career aspirations and broader societal understandings of Psychology.

We conclude by addressing how narrative coherence can function as a unifying device for Psychology education, linking disciplinary identity, pedagogical practice, and student professional development. More broadly, we suggest that addressing Psychology’s identity challenges begins not only with theoretical integration, but with the stories we tell both ourselves and our students about what Psychology is and can be.

Bio:

L.E.A.R.N (Psychology) is a collective of education‑focused academics within the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, dedicated to advancing evidence‑based teaching and learning in higher education. The group has enjoyed recent success in securing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) grant funding for innovative projects spanning feedback literacy, clinical supervision, self‑regulated learning, peer‑assisted study, and learning analytics. Funded initiatives include: Facing Feedback: Developing Student–Teacher Feedback Literacy Through Partnership; Advancing Clinical Supervision Pedagogy: Using Developmentally‑Tailored Approaches to Strengthen Engagement, Competency, and Confidence in Early Clinical Placements; Teaching First‑Year Students How to Learn: Co‑Designing Self‑Regulated Learning at Scale; The Value of Peer‑Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) for Mathematics and Statistics Students; and Early Warning: Using AI to Predict and Support At‑Risk Students in Large‑Scale Units.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Louise Sharpe (University of Sydney)
2026-05-08 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Louise Sharpe (University of Sydney)

Title: Treating anxiety in the context of physical illness: The importance of safety behaviours and fears of disease progression

Abstract:

Cognitive-behavioural treatments (CBT) for anxiety disorders are amongst the most successful applications of CBT, with a vast literature confirming efficacy with large effect sizes. However, when anxiety is treated in the context of a chronic physical illness, meta-analyses confirm that treatments are far less effective, typically with small effect sizes. This keynote will explore two potential mechanisms that are important in working with people with chronic physical illness and comorbid anxiety. First, the presentation of safety behaviours in people with chronic physical health problems will be explored. Clinicians must determine the difference between safety behaviours that exacerbate anxiety and safety precautions which keep patients safe from the impacts of their illness. A decision-making framework will be presented to differentiate safety behaviours and safety precautions. Second, the content of worries differs for people with anxiety in the context of chronic physical conditions. Specifically, an extremely common worry across populations of people with different chronic illnesses is the fear of their disease progressing. Our research shows that fears of progression are common amongst common chronic physical illnesses, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, rheumatological conditions, respiratory conditions and diabetes. This keynote will review evidence of the importance of fears of progression in anxious symptoms, theories of fear of progression and review the relevant treatment outcome literature.

Bio:

TBA

Psychology Colloquium: Scientia Prof Kaarin Anstey (University of NSW)
2026-05-15 15:00 - 16:00
Scientia Prof Kaarin Anstey (University of NSW)

Title: Disaggregating by sex and gender sheds new light on cognitive ageing and dementia risk

Abstract:

There is now a well established body of literature on modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). However, most findings have been reported in aggregate, without considering whether effects different by sex and or gender. This is a critical problem for the field because of the far higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease in women. In this presentation I will discuss epidemiological research and population modelling on the prevalence and risk factors for ADRD in terms of sex and gender and identify strengths and weakness of this approach. I will then describe the role of research that focusses on the individual including cohort studies and clinical trials, as well as mechanistic research. From this I will describe consistent sex differences in cognitive abilities over the adult life course, as well as sex differences in dementia risk factors, the association of female neuroendocrine factors with cognitive decline and incident dementia, the effects of APOE genotype, as well as sex differences in the accumulation of tau and amyloid pathology. I will also describe recent frameworks for differentiating sex and gender in cognitive ageing research.

Bio:Kaarin Anstey is a Scientia Professor of Psychology at the University of New South Wales, Director of the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute and Senior Principal Research Scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia. She held an ARC Laureate Fellowship 2020-2025 focusing on cognitive resilience in ageing. Anstey conducts research in the fields of dementia epidemiology, risk reduction, and cognitive aging and has developed evidence-based, dementia risk assessment tools that are used in clinical practice and research, including the ANU-ADRI and the CogDrisk. She currently leads two clinical trials focussing on risk reduction in in people with mild cognitive disorders, a program of research on women’s brain health and the app-based Resilient Minds study. Anstey is a member of the World Dementia Council, and a member of the World Health Organisation Guideline Development Group for risk reduction. In 2025 she was awarded the NSW Premier’s Award for Excellence in Biological and Medical Science.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Poppy Watson (UTS)
2026-05-22 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Poppy Watson (UTS)

Title: When Cues Drive Behaviour: Associative Mechanisms in Humans

Abstract:

Associative learning theories provide parsimonious explanation of how stimuli in the environment can trigger behavioural responses through both instrumental and Pavlovian mechanisms. Although much of this experimental work has been conducted using rodents, many studies have demonstrated similar associative mechanisms that underlie (at least some) human behaviour. I will provide an overview of some of this research and discuss a series of ongoing experiments investigating human S-R habits and Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer in both healthy and clinical populations. I will highlight some of the conceptual and methodological issues that have arisen along the way and outline some future plans.

Bio:

Dr Poppy Watson is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at University of Technology Sydney and an ARC Future Fellow. Her research examines how environmental cues influence attention and choice behaviour, with a particular focus on the tension between explicit goals and more reflexive responses shaped by reward learning and habit. Using behavioural experiments, alongside methods such as eye tracking and neuroimaging, she investigates the mechanisms that contribute to unwanted patterns of behaviour in both healthy and clinical populations, as well as how these insights can inform behaviour change interventions.

Originally from New Zealand, Dr. Poppy Watson completed her Master of Research and PhD at the University of Amsterdam. She worked at UNSW Sydney from 2017 to 2023 as a postdoctoral researcher and later an ARC DECRA Fellow. Since 2023, she has been based at University of Technology Sydney, where she has helped develop the undergraduate psychology program alongside her research as an ARC Future Fellow.

Psychology Colloquium: Dr Denise Moerel (Western Sydney University)
2026-05-29 15:00 - 16:00
Dr Denise Moerel (Western Sydney University)

Title: Dynamic neural encoding of visual information in individual and interacting brains

Abstract:

Our goals shape how the brain processes visual information, but separating the contributions of various cognitive processes remains a challenge. In this talk, I will demonstrate how well-controlled stimuli, combined with multivariate decoding techniques applied to time-resolved neural data (EEG/MEG), can help disentangle the specific role of selective attention in modulating visual processing from other cognitive functions such as visual short-term memory and decision-making. Extending these approaches from single brains to interacting brains further allows us to examine how information processing converges and diverges across individuals during shared behaviour, helping to tease apart the distinct cognitive processes that underpin successful cooperation.

Bio:

Denise Moerel is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development at Western Sydney University. Her research investigates how perception enables complex behaviour, such as social interaction, and how attention facilitates these processes. She uses research methodologies such as EEG and MEG in combination with multivariate decoding methods.

Psychology Colloquium: Learning, Education, and Assessment Research Network (University of Sydney Psychology)
2026-08-14 15:00 - 16:00
Learning, Education, and Assessment Research Network (University of Sydney Psychology)

Title: The discipline that couldn’t explain itself: Narrative identity and Psychology’s crisis of coherence

Abstract:

Anyone familiar with Psychology’s history will recognise a discipline shaped by fragmentation, competing paradigms, and unresolved questions about Psychology’s identity and purpose. These tensions have become more pronounced in contemporary debates about open science, interdisciplinarity, decolonisation, and Psychology’s standing beyond being ‘just’ a science. In this presentation, we argue that Psychology continues to face an identity problem that is at once theoretical, pedagogical, and professional. We situate the problem historically, tracing enduring tensions between experimental science, applied practice, and humanistic approaches. Drawing on McAdams’ narrative identity framework, we propose that Psychology’s pluralism can be understood not only as intellectual diversity, but also as narrative fragmentation.

We then examine how Psychology’s narrative is encountered by students in undergraduate education. Undergraduate curricula often present Psychology as a collection of disparate topic areas, with limited explicit guidance on how these areas connect to one another or to students’ emerging professional identities. We argue that this lack of a shared disciplinary narrative has important negative consequences for student engagement, sense of belonging, and their understanding of Psychology as a coherent and meaningful field of study.

We then present findings examining first-year students’ perceptions of the implicit and explicit narratives operating within our large introductory Psychology courses. Our findings reveal systematic mismatches between what we teach within the scientist-practitioner model and student narratives potentially shaped by career aspirations and broader societal understandings of Psychology.

We conclude by addressing how narrative coherence can function as a unifying device for Psychology education, linking disciplinary identity, pedagogical practice, and student professional development. More broadly, we suggest that addressing Psychology’s identity challenges begins not only with theoretical integration, but with the stories we tell both ourselves and our students about what Psychology is and can be.

Bio:

L.E.A.R.N (Psychology) is a collective of education‑focused academics within the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, dedicated to advancing evidence‑based teaching and learning in higher education. The group has enjoyed recent success in securing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) grant funding for innovative projects spanning feedback literacy, clinical supervision, self‑regulated learning, peer‑assisted study, and learning analytics. Funded initiatives include: Facing Feedback: Developing Student–Teacher Feedback Literacy Through Partnership; Advancing Clinical Supervision Pedagogy: Using Developmentally‑Tailored Approaches to Strengthen Engagement, Competency, and Confidence in Early Clinical Placements; Teaching First‑Year Students How to Learn: Co‑Designing Self‑Regulated Learning at Scale; The Value of Peer‑Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) for Mathematics and Statistics Students; and Early Warning: Using AI to Predict and Support At‑Risk Students in Large‑Scale Units.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Mark Dadds (University of Sydney Psychology)
2026-08-21 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Mark Dadds (University of Sydney Psychology)

Title: Evidence, fads, and the moral high ground in clinical psychology: The example of parental discipline practices

Abstract:

Clinical psychology grew up in a scientist-practitioner framework, but like all human endeavours, it is heavily influenced by fads, hearsay, and polemics. An informative example of this concerns parental discipline of children, which is central to children’s moral development but is also the context for most abuse and violence. Time-out (TO) is a widely used parental discipline strategy developed as an alternative to physical punishment for children with behavioural problems and is now the 2nd most common discipline strategy. Despite strong research support, concerns have spread widely regarding adverse impact on child mental health in part driven by evidence of widespread variability in how TO is implemented, and also with regard to its use with child from trauma and adversity backgrounds. I will present the results of several studies using a new measure of procedural implementation of TO by parents of children aged 2-8 years, to examine the relationship between use and implementation of TO and child mental health, attachment, moral development, and other outcomes. Data will include the first surveys of young adults who grew up in the Time-out generation. Overall, the findings suggest that TO is ……. you’ll need to come to hear this bit!

Bio:

Mark Dadds is Director of Growing Minds Australia, Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney and Founding Co-Director of the Child Behaviour Research Clinic, which develops state-of-the-art treatments for children and adolescents with MH problems. He has received over $17M of NHMRC, MRFF and philanthropic funding since 2020. He has developed and directed several national intervention programs for children, youth, and their families, at risk for MH problems. His Integrated Family Intervention for Child Conduct Disorder (with D.Hawes) is implemented throughout the world in the form of a tertiary treatment and since 2020, online as Parentworks and FamilyMan, both developed in partnership with the Movember Foundation. The ABC 3-part documentary of his approach to treating early onset child mental health problems led to him being awarded the 2021 Inaugural APS Award for Media Engagement with Science. Other awards include Early Career Award from the Division of Scientific Affairs of the Australian Psychological Society, the Ian Matthew Campbell Award for Excellence in Clinical Psychology, Distinguished Career Award of the Australian Association of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy, the Eric Taylor Award for Translational Research into Practice, Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, UK, 2020, and in 2021, the APS President’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology. He has authored 4 books and over 280 papers on child and family psychology receiving over 39,000 citations in total and over 11,000 since 2020 on Google Scholar, and has given invited keynote addresses and skills training workshops to international audiences throughout the world. In 2021 he established Australia’s first Clinical Trials Network in Child and Youth Mental Health funded by the federal government and tasked with developing innovative methods for identifying and responding to early mental health problems in children. This CTN has since 2021 developed Australia’s first network of Early and Midcareer researchers in child and youth mental health, established over 14 flagship, funded and endorsed new research trials, established core methods support teams in Health Economics, Lived Experience and Co-design, Translation, and Statistical methods, and engaged ~100 research collaborators in child and youth mental health.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Tasha Stanton (Adelaide University)
2026-08-28 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Tasha Stanton (Adelaide University)

Title: Taking perceptual science to the clinic to optimise care for chronic pain

Abstract:

Our understanding of what underpins perceptions of our own body and its capacity is growing, with theories of predictive processing and active inference informing both why we feel what we feel and why we do what we do. In this talk, I will explore how perceptual processes shape bodily feelings, like pain, as well as influence behaviour, such as engagement with exercise. Drawing on contemporary research in pain and perceptual science, this talk will specifically explore how we can use both pain science education and novel technologies such as virtual or mediated reality to generate ‘error’ to update perceptions of the body and its capacity as well as improve engagement with effortful interventions. The talk will explore the roles of expectation/prior experience to highlight why exercise can feel easier or harder independent of physiological capacity and why understanding this is important to both improve our clinical care.

Bio:

Professor Tasha Stanton leads the Persistent Pain Research Group at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and is co-Director of IIMPACT in Health at Adelaide University. She is a clinical pain neuroscientist, with original training as a physiotherapist. Her research focusses on pain – why do we have it and why doesn’t it go away? She has received >$17.4m in competitive research funding, has published 146 peer-reviewed journal articles, and she has been a keynote/invited speaker at >130 national and international conferences. Her research has won both national and international awards, including the International Association for the Study of Pain Ulf Lindblom Award for Clinical Science, the Australian Pain Society Rising Star Award and the Australian Physiotherapy Association Best New Investigator Award. She has a specific interest in chronic pain, osteoarthritis, pain science education, perceptual science, and novel technologies, such as virtual and mediated reality. Her research group is guided by principles of genuine consumer involvement, working closely with people who have lived experience of pain and with clinicians to identify real-world problems, and together, devise new solutions.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Ron Rapee (Macquarie University)
2026-09-04 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Ron Rapee (Macquarie University)

Title: Identifying risk for the development of internalising distress across adolescence

Abstract:

Early to middle adolescence is a time of major social and emotional change. Peer relationships begin to take on increasing salience; pubertal changes result in increasingly overt alterations in appearance; self-concept becomes more fluid and negative; and emotional reactions become more volatile. This is also a time when several major mental disorders have their peak onset. A large number of potentially modifiable risk factors for the onset of these disorders have been identified but amalgamating these risks into a single score to quantify an individual’s level of risk and help identify key targets for prevention, has not been done to date.

This talk will describe some outcomes from a longitudinal study of risks for internalising distress across the adolescent years. Participants comprised 528 young people who were assessed annually as part of the RAW (Risks for Adolescent Wellbeing) study. Initial assessment occurred when the participants were in school grade 6 (M age 11 years) and was repeated in each subsequent grade until grade 12. Primary outcomes included measures of anxiety, depression, and eating disorder. Potential risk factors included measures reflecting peer relationships; appearance comparisons; negative emotionality; and sleep. In this talk I will describe analyses looking at several of these predictors of distress. Finally, I will describe our current efforts to develop a quantitative model that combines risk scores from the beginning of high school to predict trajectories of mental health across adolescence.

Bio:

Ron Rapee is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Macquarie University and former Director of the Centre for Emotional Health. Professor Rapee specializes in mental health, especially in anxiety and related disorders across the lifespan. He has developed a number of empirically supported treatment programs that are used across the world. Professor Rapee has been honoured by awards from both scientific and consumer groups, including the Distinguished Career Award from the Australian Association for CBT and the Distinguished Contribution to Science Award from the Australian Psychological Society; and he was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 2012 for his contributions to clinical psychology, especially among young people.

Psychology Colloquium: ECR Fire Talks (University of Sydney Psychology)
2026-09-11 15:00 - 16:00
ECR Fire Talks (University of Sydney Psychology)

Samuel Warren

Staging frontotemporal dementia using multimodal features and event-based modelling

INTRODUCTION: Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) comprises several clinical phenotypes with overlapping features that can impact diagnostic timelines and confidence. Here, we applied event-based models (EBM) to characterise the relative ordering of shared clinical and neurodegenerative features in behavioural-variant FTD (bvFTD) and semantic dementia (SD).

METHODS: Cross-sectional EBMs were applied to bvFTD (n=86) and SD (n=32) groups relative to controls (n=57) using retrospective data from FRONTIER (N=175). Measures included general cognition, grey matter regions-of-interest, and behavioural abnormalities common in FTD.

RESULTS: Behavioural and cognitive features were ordered first in bvFTD, followed by abnormalities in frontostriatal, insular, and then medial temporal regions. In contrast, SD was characterised by probabilistic orderings of medial-temporal lobe, cognitive, insular, behavioural, and frontostriatal abnormalities, respectively.

DISCUSSION: EBMs applied to cross-sectional data enables identification of syndrome-specific patterns in the relative ordering of clinical and neuroanatomical abnormalities in FTD syndromes. This framework could assist with syndromic differentiation and clinical decision-making.

Bio:

Sam is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on applying novel machine learning, deep learning, and statistical models to the characterisation and detection of dementia—with a specific focus on younger-onset dementia. He works on a vast array of data modalities, such as neuroimaging, clinical tests, omics, and digital health data. This work spans big-data research across large clinical populations, as well as fine-grained characterisations of rare disorders.

Yue Li

Not Always Nice: Cultural Differences in Strategies and Motives for Making Others Feel Worse

People at times try to make others feel bad (i.e., affect worsening). Yet this form of interpersonal emotion regulation is understudied and drawn mainly from Western samples. Little is known about how it might differ across cultures, or between the perspectives of the regulator (who worsens others’ emotions) and the target (whose emotions are worsened). We examined cultural differences in affect worsening motives and strategies among Anglo-Celtic, East Asian, and South Asian participants in two studies framed from the regulator (Study 1, N = 607) or target (Study 2, N = 606) perspective. Two key findings emerged. First, after controlling for age, cultural differences in strategies emerged only from the regulator (but not target) perspective, with East Asians reporting greater use of show-off and cautioning strategies than the other groups. Second, cultural differences in motives varied by perspective: East Asians reported stronger self-focused motives (to win, to help me) as regulators, and South Asians perceived stronger counter-hedonic motives as targets. These findings suggest that culture shapes affect worsening differently for regulators and targets, with implications for cross-cultural communication.

Bio:

Yue Li is a post-doc at the School of Psychology working with Prof Carolyn MacCann. She obtained her PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas in August 2025. Her research focuses on culture, emotion, and interpersonal relationships. Her current work examines cultural differences in motives, strategies, and consequences of making others feel worse. During her PhD, she investigated how cultural context shapes the perception of emotional facial expressions and the regulation of one’s own and romantic partner’s emotions, and their implications for health and well-being.

Kyra Webb

Understanding carer experiences of fear and worry about their loved one’s cancer coming back

Partners, family members and friends play a vital role supporting people living with and beyond a cancer diagnosis. Fear of cancer recurrence (FCR), defined as the fear or worry that cancer may come back or progress is a key concern for cancer carers. Almost half of carers report levels that would be considered clinically significant among cancer survivors. At high levels, FCR is associated with poorer psychological outcomes such as increased levels of depression and anxiety. Despite identified need, few interventions addressing carer FCR are available. This talk will describe how foundational work to understand carer-specific FCR experiences has been applied to develop a theoretically informed online intervention tailored to the needs of cancer carers.

Bio:

Dr Kyra Webb is a Research Fellow with the Psycho-Oncology Co-operative Research Group (PoCoG), based in the School of Psychology at The University of Sydney. Her research focuses on understanding and improving psychosocial support for people living with and beyond cancer, as well as the partners, family members, and friends who provide care.

Kyra completed her PhD at the University of Sydney in 2024, where she examined carers’ experiences of fear and worry about a loved one’s cancer recurring or progressing. This work resulted in the development of a conceptual model that captures the unique features of carer fear of cancer recurrence, alongside the development and psychometric validation of a new measurement tool. Her postdoctoral research builds on this work and focuses on the adaptation and pilot testing of a psychosocial intervention to address carer fear of cancer recurrence.

Kyra is passionate about developing evidence-based, accessible psychosocial support that is informed by, and meets the needs of people living with cancer and their family carers.

Iana Wong

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in Couples: A Window into Coercive Control

Coercive control is a subtle form of intimate partner violence, making it difficult to identify before serious harm occurs. My research examines the psychosocial mechanisms underlying intimate partner violence, with a current focus on interpersonal emotion regulation. Specifically, I examine how partners’ deliberate worsening of each other’s emotional states predicts coercive control. A next step in this research is to examine whether it is not worsening alone, but the combination of improving and worsening a partner’s emotions, that may serve as an early warning sign of coercive control dynamics. Together, this program of research aims to better understand the mechanisms underlying intimate partner violence. Together with A/Prof Helen Paterson, I co organize a university-wide research network for domestic, sexual, and family violence researchers, and invite colleagues working in this space to connect.

Bio:

Dr Iana Wong is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, where she works with Prof Carolyn MacCann in the Regulation of Emotion and Affect Lab. She completed her PhD at UNSW in 2025, where she examined the psychosocial mechanisms linking insecure attachment to intimate partner violence.

Renèll Rodrigues

Virtual Reality as an Alternative for Attentional Bias Research and Assessment in Addiction

Attentional bias is a well-established factor in addiction research. However, traditional assessment tools face significant limitations. The widely used dot-probe task requires a large number of trials and participants to achieve statistical significance, while self-report questionnaires (such as the AUDIT) are prone to social desirability bias.

Alternative methods, such as 4×4 image arrays measuring participant eye movements (specifically dwell time), yield improved results; however, further analysis reveals an interaction between stimulus characteristics and spatial area, as many participants demonstrate spatial preferences independent of the stimulus shown.

To address these challenges, a novel approach using VR technology presents stimuli on two moving conveyor belts, allowing participants to view them freely without explicit instructions. Initial findings are promising: total viewing time correlates significantly with AUDIT scores, suggesting that this VR-based free-viewing paradigm could serve as an effective tool for individual clinical assessment.

Bio:Dr. Renèll Rodrigues earned her PhD from the University of Sydney in 2025. Her doctoral research investigated psychophysical methods and virtual reality (VR) technologies to develop novel paradigms for measuring attentional bias, with a focus on refining individual-level assessments for behavioural health challenges like alcohol addiction. Expanding on another area of interest, her current research explores the social and educational environments impacting neurodivergent children and adults.

Psychology Colloquium: Cultural diversity in research community (University of Sydney Psychology)
2026-09-18 15:00 - 16:00
Cultural diversity in research community (University of Sydney Psychology)

Title: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA

Psychology Colloquium: Postgraduate Prizes with talks by winners (University of Sydney Psychology)
2026-09-25 15:00 - 16:00
Postgraduate Prizes with talks by winners (University of Sydney Psychology)

H. Tasman Lovell Memorial Medallion winner: Dr Matthew Blanchard (in absentia)

Faculty of Science Prize for Outstanding PhD Thesis nominee: Dr Tao Chen

Title: Behavioural Rigidity in Dementia: From Clinical Significance to Neurobiological Mechanisms

Abstract:

With the rapid ageing of the global population, dementia poses an increasing challenge to healthcare systems worldwide. Neuropsychiatric symptoms are common in dementia and are associated with faster disease progression, poorer quality of life and greater caregiver burden. Neuropsychiatric symptoms frequently co-occur, determining which symptoms should be prioritised for intervention remains a major clinical challenge. In particular, behavioural rigidity is increasingly recognised as a clinically important symptom, yet the rationale for prioritising it as an intervention target, together with its underlying neural and neurochemical mechanisms, remains incompletely understood.

In this talk, I will present a series of studies using transdiagnostic dementia cohorts to address these challenges. First, I will introduce a data-driven framework for prioritising co-occurring neuropsychiatric symptoms by quantifying their relative contributions to caregiver burden, thereby identifying behavioural rigidity as a priority intervention target. I will then present multimodal neuroimaging findings that provide new insights into the neural mechanisms underlying behavioural rigidity, followed by spatial neurochemical mapping using normative neurotransmitter maps to indirectly investigate its underlying neurochemical basis. Finally, I will discuss how integrating clinical, neuroimaging and neurochemical evidence can inform mechanism-informed strategies for developing targeted interventions for neuropsychiatric symptoms in dementia.

Bio:

Dr Tao Chen is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Brain and Mind Centre, The University of Sydney. His research focuses on understanding the neural and neurochemical mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric symptoms in dementia, particularly behavioural rigidity and cognitive flexibility. By integrating multimodal neuroimaging with computational approaches in transdiagnostic dementia cohorts, he aims to translate neurobiological insights into clinically meaningful intervention strategies for dementia.

Dr Chen received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Sydney, where his doctoral thesis passed examination without corrections, was nominated for the Australian Psychological Society (APS) Excellent PhD Thesis Award and received the Faculty of Science Prize for Outstanding PhD Thesis. He has authored more than 10 first-author peer-reviewed publications, with his work appearing in leading international journals, including Brain, Human Brain Mapping, and Clinical Psychological Science. He also serves as a reviewer for Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews and is a recipient of the 2026 Psychology Early Career “Pathway” Grant from the School of Psychology, The University of Sydney.

APS Award for Excellent PhD Thesis in Psychology nominee: Dr Amaani Hatoum

Title: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA

A.H. Martin Scholarship winner: Olivia Avery

Title: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Kevin Dunn (Western Sydney University)
2026-10-09 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Kevin Dunn (Western Sydney University)

Title: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA

Psychology Colloquium: A/Prof Michele Barnes (University of Sydney Engineering)
2026-10-16 15:00 - 16:00
A/Prof Michele Barnes (University of Sydney Engineering)

Title: TBA

Abstract:

TBA

Bio:

TBA

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Anne Castles (Australian Catholic University)
2026-10-23 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Anne Castles (Australian Catholic University)

Title: Word learning in adolescent readers

Abstract:

Formal reading instruction typically concludes at the end of the primary school years, with children assumed to transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn”. Yet the results of both national and international studies show that as much as 30% of secondary school students still struggle with literacy, including at the individual word level. In this talk, I will describe recent research we have carried out on word learning in adolescent students, including on the effect of pre-existing vocabulary knowledge and level of exposure. I also discuss word learning in digital contexts, and report on experimental research conducted on facilitating word learning in noisy environments. The results will be considered in the context of theories of reading development and implications for classroom practice.

Bio:

Anne Castles is an ARC Laureate Fellow, based at the Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy at Australian Catholic University. Her research focuses on learning to read and reading disorders, with a particular interest in different processes in reading and how they are learned. Her Laureate research program explores the under-researched area of literacy in adolescents. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (FASSA) and the Royal Society of NSW (FRSN), and serves on the Editorial Boards of several major journals. In 2018, she served as President of Learning Difficulties Australia.
