Ashleigh Morse & Iseult Cremen (NSW Department of Customer Service) Abstract Policymakers in Australia and the world over are increasingly using evidence and data to guide policy decisions. The NSW Behavioural Insights Unit (BIU) partners with NSW Government agencies to use the latest evidence and data to help them deliver better services to citizens. We […]

A/Prof Stefan Volk (USYD Business School) Abstract Most modern workplaces place high value on teamwork in advancing the goals of the organization, and much research effort has been devoted to understanding and optimizing organizational and team dynamics and behavior. A notable conflict within organizational goals is incentivizing employees to improve both individual and team performance […]

Dr Sophie Li (Black Dog Institute) Abstract Rates of depression are increasing among adolescents. A novel way to reduce depression is by improving sleep. We evaluated whether an app-based intervention for insomnia improved sleep and depression, and whether changes in insomnia mediated changes in depression. We conducted a 2-arm single-blind randomised controlled trial at the […]

Dr Celia Harris (Western Sydney University) Abstract Theoretical approaches from philosophy and cognitive science emphasise how experience, cognition, memory, and self are embedded within and distributed among the social and material environment. This ‘scaffolding’ perspective implies that the characteristics of the social and material environment are critical for cognition. This perspective provides new avenues for […]

Dr Nathan Holmes (UNSW) Abstract Animals and people integrate information acquired at different times when responding to novel situations or problems. For example, after being attacked by a boy at school, a child may become fearful of places where the boy had been previously encountered; and after learning the relationship between a particular sound and […]

Dr Ashley Luckman (University of Exeter) Abstract Reason-based accounts of decision-making, such as Query Theory, have been successfully applied to a range of binary preferential choice phenomena, such as default, framing and immediacy effects. In a series of Experiments we explore the role reasons play in multi-alternative choice, particularly the attraction effect. In Experiment 1 […]

A/Prof Mac Shine (University of Sydney) Abstract Perception is thought to rely upon evolving activity within a recurrent, distributed thalamocortical network whose interconnections are modulated by bursts of noradrenaline. To test this hypothesis, we leveraged a combination of pupillometry, fMRI and recurrent neural network modelling of an ambiguous figures task. Shifts in the perceptual interpretation […]

Dr Laura Bradfield (UTS) Abstract Neuroinflammation has been observed in the striatum and hippocampus of individuals with psychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative diseases to different extents, but whether this causes the behavioural disturbances experienced by such individuals or is simply another symptom of their disease is unknown. In our lab we have begun to piece together […]

Dr Alexis Whitton (UNSW) Abstract In the face of escalating rates of depression among young people, effective and scalable treatments are urgently required. Although a range of different interventions have been found to be effective, the pivotal question is Which treatments yield the greatest benefit, and for whom? This talk explores a new approach to […]

Prof Tim Slade (USYD) Abstract The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use promotes excellence, innovation and collaboration by bringing together world-leading researchers, clinicians, people with lived experience and community to share skills, synergise data, harness new technologies and trial innovative programs to prevent and treat mental and substance use disorders. This […]