Archived Research News

Researching the best way to assist children at risk

2 December 2009

Image of Dino A £399,000 Big Lottery Fund grant will enable experts at Bangor University to research how best to help children at risk of under achievement to develop the skills they need to get the best from education.
The Incredible Years Charity (IY Cymru) funds research work in the School of Psychology at Bangor University. The University research team have introduced and research a set of programmes aimed at children, teachers and parents with support from the Welsh Assembly Government and local service providers. These programmes enable children to develop their interpersonal and self management skills.

Professor Judy Hutchings, Director of the University team explains; "Children need basic skills and competencies so that they can cope with managing their own feelings and behaviour and relate to those around them in a constructive way. The programmes that we promote and research, enable children to learn more effectively in the classroom and to interact more effectively with their family and friends.

"Our new research project will examine exactly how effective a further programme is in helping children from at risk families. Children identified as 'at risk' often fall behind educationally. The traditional solution has been to provide them with more academic teaching to support their learning- but it's now recognised that what they need are other competences to help them to take advantage of the school learning environment, not necessarily more academic support.

"We will be giving special sessions to small groups of 4-7 year old children, led by Dina, a Dinosaur puppet. Dina helps them understand how to manage their behaviour, so that they can concentrate better or be less disruptive and in turn, get the best out of their education."

The research will be undertaken in partnership with Gwynedd Council. Gwynedd already uses the Incredible Years Classroom Management and a classroom version of the Dino programme in all its 120 primary schools.

Orina Prichard, Senior Education Manager at Cyngor Gwynedd Council explains: "Assisting all children in Gwynedd primary schools to gain the social and emotional skills needed to for learning ensures that they are able to achieve. It also fits well with the National Assembly Government's self managed Foundation Phase play based learning. We now want to measure the effectiveness of a further programme for a particular group of pupils over time, against cost- and against the cost of not providing this extra support. Children who do not have emotional and social skills are at risk of educational under-achievement, conduct disorder, and, ultimately delinquency, substance misuse and criminality.

There is of course a greater cost to the individual and society of allowing this to happen- so we're keen to work with IYCymru and Bangor University to find the most effective means of averting this."

Highlighting the importance of the BIG Research programme, Big Lottery Fund Wales Chair and UK Board Member, Huw Vaughan Thomas, said: "This research programme will provide a valuable insight into how best to help children at risk of under achievement to develop the skills they need to get the best from education. The dissemination of findings from this research will ultimately lead to the development of better services for children in Wales and help towards fulfilling our mission of bringing real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need."

Pictured are children following the Classroom Dina Project.

Measured - The time it takes us to find the words we need.

The time it takes for our brains to search for and retrieve the word we want to say has been measured for the first time. The discovery is reported in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA today (PNAS Online Early Edition November 23-27, 2009).

Most people think that words and meaning are the two sides of the same coin and that the form of a word is the same as its meaning, or at least, that word and meaning cannot be split. However, this is not the case. Word forms have an existence of their own in the human mind, disconnected, from meaning- at least, for a fraction of a second.

Until now, in the field of speech production, it was unknown when exactly a word form is retrieved by the human brain when, for instance, people have to name a picture.

As Professor Guillaume Thierry of Bangor University, one of the paper's authors explains:

"If you have to say the word apple upon seeing the picture of an apple, the brain does not access the word form "a-p-p-l-e" instantly, it takes time, and until now, it was unknown exactly how much time it took. Along with colleagues at Pompeau Fabra and Barcelona universities, we measured exactly when word forms are retrieved by the brain. That happens about one fifth of a second after a picture is shown."

Thierry explains: "This is a very short time, but it makes a lot of sense if one considers that the average normal speech rate is about 5 words per second. Surely, if we can produce five words per second in normal speech, it means that we can dig each and every word from memory in about one fifth of a second."

Thierry and colleagues hope to understand every stage of word production: analysis of meaning, word access, word retrieval and programming of speech. They also intend to do the same thing in comprehension to reach a full understand of the stages the human mind goes through to understand and produce language.

Their experiment combined picture naming and a technique which measures electrical activity produced by the brain over the scalp. It also pioneered the recording of brain activity over the scalp, while participants spoke out loud. This proved a technical challenge as mouth movements produce electrical noise stronger than the power of signals produced by the brain.

The research is the fruit of collaboration between language laboratories in Barcelona Pompeau Fabra and Bangor universities. This joint venture was made possible by the ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice in Bangor University, the sole centre dedicated to research on bilingualism in the UK.

24 November 2009

Psychologists transfer knowledge to assist children's services

Following the success of a Knowledge Transfer event at Bangor University's School of Psychology last year, Dr Val Morrison, Deputy Head of the School has hosted another free educational event, highlighting key themes in Assembly government and UK governmental policy - children, learning and wellbeing. This event coincided with a programme of week long activities; the Gwynedd Children and Young People's Week, 14 - 20th November. The Opening address was made by Mr Iwan Trefor Jones, Chairman of the Gwynedd Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership, the School's event in the wider context.

food dudes 2 Over 80 individuals registered for a half-day of workshops and lectures based on national and internationally recognised research into language development & bilingualism, reading skills, dyslexia recognition and support, child behaviour and parenting programmes, mindfulness-based stress reduction, and promoting healthy behaviour including the Food Dudes healthy eating programme for children, and alcohol misuse interventions for young adults. Those attending included parents, headteachers, specialist teachers and nursery managers, learning support services staff, educational psychologists, counsellors and healthcare professionals.

Interest in, and the relevance of this type of information exchange between researchers, the general public and practitioners, is obviously high, so the School of Psychology staff are currently working up a programme of other such free events, including work-based learning opportunities, for 2010. For further information please contact v.morrison@bangor.ac.uk or the School of Psychology's Research & Knowledge Transfer Manager, steph.dolben@bangor.ac.uk.

20 November 2009

Under Pressure: The Impact of Stress on Decision Making

We are faced with making decisions all the time. Often, we will carefully deliberate the pros and cons of each item, taking into consideration past experiences with similar situations before making our ultimate choice. However, a new study suggests that cognitive stress, such as distraction, can influence this balanced, logical approach to decision making.

Psychologists Jane Raymond and Jennifer L. O’Brien of Bangor University in the United Kingdom wanted to investigate how cognitive stress affects rational decision making. In this study, participants played a simple gambling game in which participants earned money by selecting between two stimuli—in this case, they chose between pictures of two different faces. Once they made their choice, they immediately saw if they won, lost, or broke even. Each face was always associated with the same outcome throughout this task. In the next part of the experiment, the volunteers saw each face individually and had to indicate if they had seen those faces before or not. Some of the volunteers were distracted during this task while others were not.

The results, reported in the current issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that distractions significantly impact decision making. The volunteers who were not distracted tended to excel at recognizing faces that had been highly predictive of either winning or losing outcomes. However, the volunteers who were distracted only recognized faces that had been associated with winning.

The authors note that when we are stressed and need to make a decision, we are “more likely to bear in mind things that have been rewarding and to overlook information predicting negative outcomes.” In other words, these findings indicate that irrational biases, which favor previous rewards, may guide our behavior during times of stress.

First Conference at Bangor to see birth of new discipline?

The first ever conference focussing solely on neurobilingualism was held at Bangor University between 19-20 September 2009.

You may be unfamiliar with the word neurobilingualism. That's because it is not a word that has been widely used before. The organisers of this Conference at Bangor University's ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice, however, believe that by holding a conference focussing solely on the brain processes involved when we listen to and speak two languages, we could be witnessing the birth of a new area of study- neurobilingualism.

The organisers are delighted that their Conference has drawn internationally leading experts to share their research and discuss the neuroscientific aspects of bilingualism at the Bangor Conference. The Conference will hear from experts from all over the world, and, in particular, eminent keynote speakers from the US, Spain, Germany and Italy as well as the UK.

As Conference organiser Professor Guillaume Thierry explains; "Psychologists consider language processing one of the most difficult and complex tasks that our brain has to handle. Can you imagine the processes that the brain undergoes in handling two languages alternately or simultaneously?

"Neurobilingualism is all about studying what is actually happening in the bilingual speaker's brain as various language processes take place. As well as asking ourselves hypothetical questions about how a bilingual individual can function in one language and leave the other one “in stand-by”, we use brain imaging and other state-of-the-art technologies to discover the patterns of brain activity underlying this miracle of the mind.

"Being bilingual and switching from one language to another comes naturally to the bilingual speaker- but what happens in the brain is quite remarkable- and we are barely beginning to understand how this is achieved" he added.

In the long run, understanding how our brains work can enable us to assist those with brain impairments or injury. In this case, it may help us identify the best strategy to help people with language impairments to recover some of their abilities after injury or illness. Learning how bilingual speakers acquire two languages can also assist in the educational sphere in many bilingual communities around the world. In particular, understanding how language knowledge develops alongside other cognitive skills has very important repercussions for educational strategies in the future.
http://bilingualism.bangor.ac.uk/conference2009gq.php.en

20 October 2009

Staying Positive - A Key Component to Business Success

Could using some simple psychological techniques help your business through the recession? According to academics at Bangor University's leading School of Psychology, the answer is a resounding "yes!"

As Dr John Parkinson, Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychology explains; "Using positive aspects of psychology could assist businesses to develop the strengths that their employees have, to harness their motivation or to help their employees adapt to change. Psychological techniques could also be used to create better relationships within the company, and with customers and suppliers. Whatever the technique, if it helps your business beat the recession then surely you should consider it?"

The School of Psychology is offering local businesses an exclusive workshop: Using Positive Psychology To Optimise Your Business. The free workshop will be led by Dr John Parkinson on Wednesday October 21st, 1pm-4pm at Bangor University, College Road, Brigantia Building, Room 342.

The workshop focuses on several aspects of positive psychology, and applies them to real-life workplace scenarios. It is intended for organisations within any sector. For those interested in attending, please contact d.menichino@bangor.ac.uk no later than Wednesday October 14th to find out more details and book this popular session. There is a 40 seat capacity.

8 October 2009

'Doctoring the Mind' receives excellent reviews

A book by Professor Richard Bentall, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Bangor University, has attracted excellent reviews in both The Observer and The Times prior to its publication on the 25th June 2009.

Doctoring the Mind, is described by publishers Allen Lane as a stimulating and innovative study which challenges the established orthodoxy of beliefs surrounding the treatment of mental illness.

Starting with surprising evidence from the World Health Organisation that suggests people recover better from mental illness in a developing country than in the first world, Doctoring the Mind asks the question: how good are our mental health services, really? Richard Bentall picks apart the science that underlies current psychiatric practice across the US and UK. Arguing passionately for a future of mental health treatment that focuses as much on patients as individuals as on the brain itself, this is a book set to redefine our understanding of the treatment of madness in the twenty-first century.

Focussing on the stories of individual patients and the specific effects of different treatments, Professor Bentall extends the arguments he began in his previous book, Madness Explained. His bold questioning of accepted truisms will redefine perceptions of our chemically-dependent mental health system, as he passionately argues for treatment which centres on a relationship with the patient, not just the physiology of the brain.

This new book from world-renowned expert Richard Bentall could have a profound impact on the treatment and understanding of mental illness in the twenty-first century.

Richard Bentall is internationally renowned for his research into the causes and treatment of mental illness. His previous book, Madness Explained won the British Psychological Society Book Award in 2004.

Richard Bentall graduated and gained a PhD in experimental psychology at Bangor University before obtaining a qualification in clinical psychology at the University of Liverpool. He later obtained an MA in philosophy applied to health care from University College Swansea. He worked as a forensic clinical psychologist for the National Health Service and lectured at the University of Liverpool, where he was appointed Professor of Clinical Psychology. In 1999 he moved to a Chair in Experimental Clinical Psychology at the University of Manchester. In 1989 he received the British Psychological Society’s May Davidson Award for his contribution to the field of clinical psychology. Apart from his interests in severe mental illness, Richard Bentall also studies differences between human and animal learning mechanisms and has carried out research into the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome.

Experts at Bangor University contribute to UK 'real-virtuality' simulator network

Experts in virtual reality at Bangor University are all set to contribute to an exciting large-scale project to develop what they term a 'real-virtuality' simulator. Showcased recently at a UK 'Pioneers 09' event at London's Olympia Conference Centre, the 'real-virtuality' simulator project network has identified experts within the UK who could turn the simulator concept into a reality.

They aim to develop a 'virtual cocoon' that will not only recreate sights and sounds but also smell, feel and even taste, to create a fully immersive perceptual experience. As well as the obvious entertainment value of such an experience, the developers also see potential for use in education and other applications such as business and virtual tourism. Such applications could help protect the environment by reducing the need to travel.

Vision scientist Simon Watt at the School of Psychology will work on the visual element of the display technology. He studies how the human visual system works and will be ensuring that the display system is designed to best suit how our brain re-creates the sense of three dimensional objects from the signals sent by our visual system.

Currently in early 'proof of concept' phase, the research network, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, has established that the know-how to make the prototype a reality exists within the UK. The next phase would see the network gaining major funding from one of the UK government funded research councils to develop the project over a number of years.

26 March 2009

Bangor scientists show that language shapes perception

Advances in cognitive neuroscience (the science of how the brain works when we think) have shown that what our eyes see and what our brain interprets are two different things.

Professor Guillaume Thierry, Dr Panos Athanasopoulos and colleagues report in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that our language causes our brains to perceive colours differently. Dr Athanasopoulos explains: “Our language forces us to cut up the world in different ways. Greek speakers systematically use two different terms to refer to blue: the sky is ghalazio (light blue), never ble (dark blue), and a blue pen is ble but can never be ghalazio. English speakers would have no problem calling both the sky and a pen blue in an instant.”

To see whether language shapes our biological and physiological processes of colour perception, the researchers used a technique called event related brain potentials (ERPs). This technique tracks activity in the brain millisecond by millisecond. Professor Thierry explains: “We know that the visual system in our brain begins processing stimuli like colour a few tens of milliseconds after light has hit the retina of the eye. We also know that language consciously invades our thinking about 200 milliseconds later. Using ERPs, we are able to look at very early stages of visual analysis, well before conscious language information is accessed.”

The researchers found differences in visual processing of light and dark blues between Greek and English speakers as early as 100 milliseconds, suggesting that indeed, speakers of different languages literally have differently structured minds.

1 March 2009

New discoveries about happy faces to assist people with rare genetic condition

New discoveries about how the brain processes facial expressions could lead to improved ways of educating and training for people with a rare genetic neurodevelopmental condition called Williams Syndrome. Reporting in the Journal of Neuroscience (28.2.09), Dr Debra Mills, a Reader at Bangor University's School of Psychology, reports that, as a result of their research, the team have learnt more about exactly when and where the brain processes positive and negative emotional expressions. Her research using a combined electrophysiological and brain imaging (fMRI) approach was conducted jointly with colleagues at Stanford University and the Salk Institute in the US. They discovered that a part of the brain that responds to fearful expressions in most people, is actually more active as a result of happy faces in people with this disorder.

13 February 2009

Audience Response System

The Audience Response System (ARS) is an electronic voting system similar to that used on the television programme “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” when the contestant wants to “ask the audience”. In the television show, the contestant asks the audience a question, and the members of the audience then enter a response on a personal handset. A computer collates the answers and displays them for the audience to see in an easy to understand format. The ARS is used in the same manner during a lecture. A lecturer can pose a question to the students, and they then enter their responses on a personal handset, with the answers collated and displayed to the class on screen as a graph.

The system is used in conjunction with Powerpoint, with the questions displayed on one slide, and then the answers displayed on the next slide. The responses are almost instantaneous. The system is going to be used with some of the largest lectures at the University to foster interaction between a single lecturer and up to 400 students.

1 February 2009

Teasing is good for you!

The use of insults at a young age improves social skills and helps children develop a sense of humour according to research by Dr Erin Heerey of the School of Psychology. Her research also found that "play fighting" gives pupils the chance to tell the difference between real and pretend violence and she insists that teasing and nicknames were an "essential part of life" and should not automatically be confused with bullying. Teasing helps children to discover how to use their bodies, voices and faces to communicate nuances of meaning, she added.

Dr Heerey said: "I think it takes a while for kids to gain proficiency. You can watch teenagers queuing up to buy a movie ticket and they banter with one another. They say really horrible things to one but they are all laughing and it's all fun."

Dr Heerey carried out recent research into the role that teasing plays in US college fraternities. It found older students mocked newcomers with crude nicknames about drunkenness and other failings in a way that encouraged them to change their behaviour and helped group bonding. The study - with Dacher Keltner of California University - found that these "playful humiliations" led to people becoming better friends. When the researchers revisited the group two years later, students who had been the butt of jokes were in leadership positions and playing the same role of passing on social norms.

Dr Heerey, originally from Wisconsin, said British people seemed more serious with their teasing than Americans. She said: "People will say something outlandish with a totally straight face. But people in Britain poke fun at themselves a little bit more than Americans. "As an American, you're expecting to see these non-verbal cues that say 'I'm joking' but you don't see them - but they are there and you just have to look a little closer."

9 January 2009

From training the brain to understanding a smile– 37th Annual Welsh BPS Student Conference Report

Wales' psychology students got together at Bangor University on Friday 4th April to discuss their research at the 37th BPS Welsh Branch Annual Student Conference. Twenty-nine research papers were presented by students from all the Welsh universities teaching psychology, with a particularly strong representation (22) from among Bangor.

The third year undergraduate and Masters' degree students presented their research findings to a mix of students from all levels within the department.The research include assessing different learning and teaching methods, assessing whether improved information improves a patient's satisfaction with healthcare services, assessing how we read faces and social cues and questions such as why people who hear voices do not develop schizophrenia.

"We're delighted both to be hosting the event and that so many of our own students have taken advantage of the opportunity to present their own unique research findings. Presenting their research will be a great learning experience for them. Having their research papers published in the Conference proceedings will also be an excellent addition to their career CVs," said Professor Oliver Turnbull, Head of the School of Psychology at Bangor University.

9 April 2008

£1.2m Dementia Study

Professor Bob Woods of Bangor University's School of Psychology is to lead a major new research project investigating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of ‘reminiscence groups’ for helping people with dementia and their carers. The groups, run by professionals and volunteers, use photographs, recordings and other objects to trigger personal memories for people with dementia, and it is thought that this may help to maintain their autobiographical memory and improve their relationships with their carers, but there is little evidence about their effectiveness. The £1.2 million trial is commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research’s Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) programme. In the project, researchers will investigate the effectiveness and added value of reminiscence group therapy compared with the usual care that people with dementia are offered.

“The growing number of people with dementia, and the increasing cost of caring for them, provides a major incentive to develop and test methods of supporting them in the community for longer,” says Professor Woods. “Drug treatment has received most attention, but there is increasing evidence that psychological and social interventions may be equally effective, even preferable where medication has negative side-effects. We hope that the results of our study will provide the NHS with important evidence to help inform the care of people with dementia.” View full details about the project.

2 January 2008