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

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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

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A.H. Martin Scholarship winner: Olivia Avery

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

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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)

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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

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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.

Psychology Colloquium: A/Prof Miri Forbes (Macquarie University)
2026-10-30 15:00 - 16:00
A/Prof Miri Forbes (Macquarie University)

Title: The Future of Mental Disorder Classification: Problems, Progress, and Possibilities

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There is growing evidence of substantial limitations in traditional, categorical approaches to the classification of mental disorders like the DSM and ICD. In this talk I will examine the case for rethinking how we classify mental illness, and introduce the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP), which represents an emerging empirically derived alternative. The hierarchical and dimensional approach of the HiTOP framework offers promising solutions to the limitations of traditional approaches and offers new directions for research, assessment, and intervention. I will also address the challenges of changing our approach to classification, and explore why there are good reasons to be optimistic regardless.

Bio:

Miri Forbes is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychological Sciences at Macquarie University. Miri was awarded her PhD in Psychology in 2014, and went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Minnesota before returning to Australia for a Macquarie University Research Fellowship in 2018, followed by back-to-back NHMRC Investigator Grants funding her current program of research on improving the diagnosis, assessment, and classification of mental disorders. She is President of the international Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) Society, and a member of the Executive Board of the Macquarie University Lifespan Health and Wellbeing Research Centre.

Psychology Colloquium: Prof Jason Mattingley (University of Queensland)
2026-11-06 15:00 - 16:00
Prof Jason Mattingley (University of Queensland)

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