The Social Development Lab welcomed two Nuffield placement students and Dr Dawn Watling was awarded funding from the British Psychological Society to support Pancy Poon on an 8 week Undergraduate Research Assistant placement.
The Social Development Lab March 2017 Newsletter is now available!
You can also see what the lab has been up to, as well as ongoing and upcoming projects, ways to get involved, and recent publications within the lab.
The Newsletter can be accessed by clicking here
We are currently recruiting for adolescent’s aged 13-17-years to take part in our research at Royal Holloway, University of London. The current study is an eye-tracking study examining where individuals are looking when making decisions about emotions.
If you would like to find out more information please click here.
The Social Development Lab is constantly recruiting individuals of all ages to partake in research projects. If you would like to register yourself and/or your child/children you can now do so on our online registration form here. Please see the recruitment page for further information on current projects.
Rachel Nesbit recently received a PsyPAG UK Bursary to present at the Annual Psychology Postgraduate Conference in York. Rachel presented the first wave of data looking at the factors that may influence the ability to recognise emotions in adolescence.
You can find out more on Rachel’s research here.
This summer we welcomed two A-level Psychology students to the lab. Mursal Kharoti and Harnit Kaur Chatra are both students at Swakeleys School for Girls and are taking part in the Nuffield Research Placements scheme. Mursal has been working with Dr Alana James to investigate primary school children’s perceptions of school bullying. You can read her experience of starting the placement here. Harnitt has been working with Dr Eilidh Cage on her research looking at mental health in autism spectrum conditions, and also completed research with Professor Robin Walker and PhD researcher Hannah Harvey on hemianopic dyslexia and scrolling text. You can also read more about her placement experience here
The Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London are hosting a Psychology schools Lecture titled ‘Understanding Social Interactions’ on Tuesday 13th October. The evening will take place in Royal Holloway’s Windsor Auditorium. During the evening there will be a range of psychology demonstrations and activities taking place for pupils to interact with, including eye-tracking, attention tasks and examples of student and staff research. Members of staff from the psychology department will then deliver mini lectures looking at social interactions from different psychological perspectives – including social psychology and neuroscience. Topics will include social power, and how we understand others’ actions.
The Social Development Lab at Royal Holloway have recently attended the BPS Developmental and Social section conference in Manchester. Dawn presented one of her undergraduate projects by Rachel Nesbit, Dorte Sorensen, Lilian Li and Natascha Ahmed. This presentation was titled: Audience familiarity and children’s understanding of disclaimers. This presentation highlighted how children’s understanding of disclaimers can be influenced by the familiarity of the audience; with findings pointing to the positive nature of how we judge our friends. This research also explores how story disclaimers can be interpreted differently depending on the outcome of stories given.
Alana presented research conducted with Hanna Bӧck on university students’ definitions and experiences of bullying. This found that students recognise a range of harmful behaviours can be involved in bullying, but their definitions of bullying tended not to include key criteria used by researchers such as persistence over time. It also supported previous research that around 5% of students experience bullying whilst at university.
Alana also presented preliminary findings from a study into parents’ use of online parenting support forums, from a collaboration with Dr Marco Cinnirella. A survey of UK parents showed that many parents are using such forums to gain reassurance and advice about their child from other parents, and that they may have both positive and negative experiences of such online support. The study also investigated the relationship between aspects of parenting such as stress and parental satisfaction in relation to use of online support.
The Social Development Lab says goodbye to two of its longstanding members; Former Director of the Lab; Professor Patrick Leman and former Post-Doctoral Teaching Associate; Dr Anna Doering. Anna will be perusing a lecturer role at the University of Westminster as of September, investigating the development of values in childhood and adolescence and how these are affected by experiences and context. Professor Leman will be joining Kings College as Professor and Dean of Education in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience.
We would like to thank them for their contributions to the lab and wish them all the best for the future.
The Social Development Lab at Royal Holloway, University of London now has it’s very own twitter account. Want to keep up to date with what we’re up to? Follow us at;
The Social Development Lab now has its very own Newsletter! The Newsletter shows what the lab has been up to, as well as upcoming projects, ways to get involved, and recent publications within the lab.
The Newsletter can be accessed by clicking on the picture to the left.
