Psychology Centenary Seminar Series

All on Tuesday in S1, Psychology, 7 George Square at 4pm except for the Combe lecture which will be held on **Thursday in F21.


Week 2, Sept 26
Professor Rupert Brown, University of Sussex (BSc 1972)

Feeling bad about having done wrong: Social consequences of collective shame and guilt
In this talk I will present work from my ongoing research programme on the consequences of feeling guilty or ashamed for the actions of other members of one's group. Guilt and Shame are two related social emotions that can distinguished by their principal focus: guilt is concerned mainly with the misdeeds and their consequences for other groups; shame is concerned mainly with how the misdeeds reflect badly on the in-group's public image. As a result, guilt is predicted to lead to attempts to repair the damage done to the out-group; shame, in contrast, is thought to lead to less pro-social outcomes such as blaming or avoiding the out-group. I will present field and experimental work from such diverse contexts as Indigenous-Non Indigenous relations in Chile, post-conflict Bosnia Herzegovina and host society attitudes towards asylum-seekers in the UK to illustrate these arguments.


Week 3, Oct 3
Dr Louise Phillips, Reader, University of Aberdeen (BSc 1990)

Adult aging and emotional processing
Age differences in perceiving emotions have been reported for some negative emotions (e.g. sadness), but not others (disgust). Neuropsychological explanations for these findings have been suggested, including age-related changes in the frontal and medial temporal lobes of the brain. However, there are also age differences in life experience, current mood state and attentional biases which may be relevant. A series of experiments investigating these factors will be discussed.


Week 4, Oct 10
Professor Murdo MacDonald, History of Scottish Art, University of Dundee (MA 1981, PhD 1985)

Reflections of a visual thinker
Whether studying psychology or painting I have always been interested in the exploration of visual thinking and visual thinkers. It’s an area that crosses disciplinary boundaries and it has informed most of my research. In this talk I will reflect on some of the visual thinkers, both artist and scientists, whose works have intrigued me.


Week 5, Oct 17
Professor Andy Ellis, University of York (PhD 1979)

Things, words and the brain
My PhD at Edinburgh was concerned with the relationship between speech production and short-term memory. My research since has largely been focused on the processes by which we recognise and produce familiar words, and the similarities and differences between word and face recognition. I have used a mixture of cognitive and neuropsychological approaches, with some recent forays into neuroimaging. My talk will be an overview of research concerning the factors that make words easier or harder to recognise and produce by healthy participants and patients with neuropsychological conditions such as stroke and Alzheimer's disease; also of research on the roles played by the two cerebral hemispheres in language processing. These are all interests that date back to my time in Edinburgh.


Week 6 CENTENARY WEEK – Centenary day Friday 27 October


Week 7, Oct 31
Professor Owen Holland, Professor of Robotics, University of Essex (Demonstrator 1970)

Could we build a conscious robot?
In the last few years a new discipline has begun to emerge: machine consciousness. This talk will describe the background to this movement, and will present a line of thought showing how the problem of constructing a truly autonomous robot may also constitute an approach to building a conscious machine. The basis of the theory is that an intelligent robot will need to simulate both itself and its environment in order to make good decisions about actions, and that the nature and operation of the internal self model may well support some consciousness-related phenomena.

We are currently developing a robot that we hope will one day possess and use a self-model similar to our own. We believe that this requires a robot that does not merely fit within a human envelope, but one that is anthropomimetic -with a skeleton, muscles, tendons, eyeballs, etc. -a robot that will have to control itself using motor programs qualitatively similar to those of humans. The early indications are that such robots are very different from conventional humanoids; the many degrees of freedom and the presence of active and passive elasticity do provide strikingly lifelike movement, but the control problems may not be tractable using conventional robotic methods.

The project is limited to the construction and study of a single robot, and there are no plans for the robot to have any encounters with others of its kind, or with humans. Without any social dimension to its existence, and without language, could such a robot ever achieve a consciousness intelligible to us?


Week 8, Nov 7
Professor Ronan O’Carroll, University of Stirling (BSc 1979)

Psychology, medicine and health -the example of liver disease and its treatment
It has become increasingly clear that how we behave has a marked impact on our health. The leading causes of death in the world today are heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease, HIV/AIDS and accidental deaths, and all have a strong behavioural element. A real challenge for psychology is to find effective ways of helping people to change their behaviour, and to maintain this behaviour change in order to improve their health. Medical and surgical interventions often have a marked impact on psychological function, and psychology has much to offer in the evaluation of therapeutic interventions. In this seminar, liver disease and its treatment will be used as an illustrative example. Topics to be covered will include, neuropsychological evaluation of treatment efficacy, deciding who should be listed for transplantation, living donor liver transplantation, and medication adherence.


Week 9, COMBE LECTURE – ** Thursday November 16th in F21
Professor Robert Sternberg, Harvard University**

Teaching for Wisdom, Intelligence and Creativity


Week 10, Nov 21
Professor Alan Wing, Professor of Human Movement, University of Birmingham (BSc 1969)

Keeping a grip
Lifting and moving objects are actions we repeat hundreds of times every day. A key element is grasping and the hand grip force we use depends on the load and the properties of the hand-object interface. I will review behavioural studies that show how an interplay of predictive and reactive control helps us to keep grasp stable when manipulating objects that can range widely in mass, size, shape, surface texture, and so on.


Week 11, Nov 28
Dr Chris Idzikowski , Director of Edinburgh Sleep Centre ( BSc 1975) Heriot Row

Historical and contemporary theories of sleep, dreaming and wakefulness -an 'applied psychology' perspective
In the past decade the multidisciplinary area of 'sleep medicine' has generated a wealth of clinical and research data on sleep. In addition, brain imaging, particularly fMRI has provided insight into sleep's mental processes. The discovery of the orexin/hypocretin neuropeptide, the role of histamine, the re-discovery of the ganglionic photoreceptors, and the elucidation of the workings of the suprachiasmatic nucleus have also extended our understanding of this surprisingly complex behavioural state.

Accumulation of comparative psychology data, coupled with some progress in the history and anthropology of sleep has also widened the backdrop upon which the results of research psychology can be reviewed.

As ideas and concepts are changing, applied psychology (clinical, forensic, health and human factors) also needs to remain aware of what's going on in sleep. Sleep is a movable feast which interacts with various behavioural and mental rhythms -this talk is its smorgasbord.

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Please note that all seminars take place at 4pm in room S1 except for the Drever and Birrell Lectures which will be held in F21 at 5.15pm.


Week 15, January 16    Drever Lecture
Dr William McGrew, Department of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge

Handedness: The other uniquely human trait
The lecture will focus on current state of play regarding human handedness, as a possibly unique and universal human trait. This will entail using comparative data, from other primates, especially chimpanzee, and from a range of human societies. I also will talk about some methodological issues, e.g. observational versus experimental approaches, which will allow me to bring in some ethology. Finally, if time permits, perhaps some speculation about evolutionary relationship between manual laterality and the other purportedly unique human trait of language.


Week 16, January 23
Professor Martin Hughes, Professor in Education, University of Bristol

Children's ideas about their brain and its role in learning
There is currently much interest in the intersecting fields of neuroscience, psychology and education. One emerging issue concerns the conceptions which children have of their own brain, of the role it plays in their learning, and how these might be enhanced through educational interventions. This seminar reports some early findings from an ongoing research programme on these issues.


Week 17, January 30
Dr Martin Yeomans, Reader In Psychology, University of Sussex

Making sense of food
The quadrupling of the incidence of obesity in the last two decades has made greater understanding of how our appetite system facilitates over-eating of critical importance. The research described in this talk was aimed at elucidating the role of hedonics in short-term over-eating, particularly in relation to energy density (ED). Evidence suggests that, aside from an innate preference for sweet taste, most liking for high-ED foods is acquired. Two learning models, flavour-nutrient and flavour-flavour learning, will be described, and how we express this liking in relation to appetite explored. The ability of acquired liking to enhance short-term intake, coupled with our inability to modulate meal-size depending on ED, leads to significantly more energy being ingested when faced with a high-ED palatable diet.  Reducing overall diet palatability is not an option, but maximising post-ingestive satiety may be a way forward in the search for foods which can be enjoyed without leading to excessive energy intake.


Week 18, February 6
Professor Richard Hammersley, Director of the Centre for Behavioural Aspects of Health and Disease, Glasgow Caledonian University

Why I hate the brain – a critique of neuropsychology from the perspective of addiction research
This presentation will argue that over the last 30 years despite receiving the majority proportion of research funding on addictions, neuroscience has failed to deliver much of clinical or practical importance. During the same time psychology and sociology have advanced treatment and policy. Some of the ways that neuroscience impede psychological research will be discussed and it will be proposed that neuropsychology needs to be governed by psychology theory and psychological research practices, rather than by neuroscience theory and practice


Week 19, February 13
Professor Karl Mackie, The Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution, London

A positive psychology of conflict? – Learning from mediation in commercial/legal disputes
Mediation as a conflict resolution process is increasingly recognized around the globe as a valid part of legal systems. Dr Karl Mackie is a pioneer of this subject in Europe, a leading commercial mediator, and Chief Executive of the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) in London. He reviews how this innovation has developed, and explores its psychological dimensions, both generally and with illustration from real-life cases.


Week 20, February 20    Birrell Lecture
Professor Mark Williams, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Wellcome Principal Research Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and the treatment of depression
My current research is examining the origins and nature of impairments in autobiographical memory, future thinking and problem solving, which are characteristic of the suicidal state of mind, and how these thinking patterns are activated by depressed mood. In parallel, clinical research is underway to adapt mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for use with individuals who have experienced periods of suicidal ideation or behaviour in the past.

The lecture will focus on how mindfulness-based approaches can help reduce vulnerability to future depression by affecting the way in which we react to our own negative moods.  Mindfulness training aims to allow us first to notice, then to change the tendencies to react with avoidance or rumination (used as a habitual strategy to get rid of negative thoughts), towards a stance of letting go of attempts to change things. Instead of avoiding, participants in mindfulness classes learn to approach negative moods, and allowing them to come and go. Preliminary evidence suggests that learning such skills can be enormously empowering for many people.


Week 21, February 27
Dr Kim Graham, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge

The role of the medial temporal lobes in human episodic memory: new insights and challenges
In this talk I will describe how recent neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies are challenging long-standing views about the organisation of episodic memory, in particular that medial temporal lobe (MTL) regions comprise a homogenous system exclusively specialised for long-term memory. Via a series of studies I will demonstrate (a) functional specialisation in MTL regions and (b) evidence of involvement of these structures in tasks that do not require long-term memory. I will propose that the hippocampus plays a key role in creating and processing complex spatial representations, while perirhinal cortex is essential for binding together features within individual objects. These studies imply that sharp cognitive distinctions between perception, short-term memory and long-term memory may not map onto neatly segregated modules in the brain.

Week 22, March 6
Professor Lynne Murray, Department of Psychology, University of Reading

The intergenerational transmission of affective disorder
I will talk about two longitudinal prospective studies we have been doing on child development in the context of maternal postnatal depression, and maternal anxiety disorder (social phobia and GAD). The depression study has followed a cohort of 100 children from birth to 16 years, and the anxiety study a sample of 220 from birth to two years. I will focus on the role of mother-child interactions.


Week 23, March 13
Professor Nick Wade, Department of Psychology, University of Dundee

Pioneers of Psychology – some perceptual portraits
‘Perceptual portraits’ represent pioneers of psychology in an unconventional style. The portraits themselves are not always easy to discern – the viewer needs to apply the power of perception in order to extract the facial features from the design which carries them. The aim of perceptual portraits is both artistic and historical. They generally consist of two elements – the portrait and some appropriate motif. The nature of the latter depends upon the endeavours for which the portrayed person was known. In some cases the motif is drawn specifically to display a phenomenon associated with the individual, in others it is derived from a figure or text in one of their books, or apparatus which they invented. The portraits and motifs have themselves been manipulated in a variety of ways, using graphical, photographical, and computer graphical procedures. I believe that such perceptual portraits both attract attention and engage the spectator’s interest to a greater degree than do conventional paintings, prints or photographs.


Week 24, March 20
Professor Mark Haggard, Department of Psychology, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge

Walking the psychological tightrope between subjective and objective measurement
An enduring underlying tension within Psychology has been that between objectivity and subjectivity. Obviously this conflict has a dual basis, in the practicalities of what can be measured, and in the scientific agenda of what is deemed interesting and worthwhile to study. In the past these bases were linked, so "experimental psychology" (essentially a method label) came to refer to those topic areas where it was expedient at the time to apply experimental designs and performance methods which in most respects can be considered objective. This linkage and limitation is far less nowadays. In medicine and healthcare, pragmatism has led to the avoidance of excesses such as that seen in early C20 behaviourism. However this has also led to sweeping under the carpet the psychological and philosophical problems involved in thinking about the relation between the objective and subjective domains, about the implications of the respective variabilities, and about when each is appropriate. My recent applicable work on a method for use as statistical control when evaluating unblindable interventions such as surgery and complex packages of care (ie a counterpart to the experimental design of the placebo pill) suggests both new ways of handling the classical tension and new studies feasible with functional neuro-imaging.