Psychology collection
The Department of Psychology offers some of the most popular and highly-rated undergraduate courses at Otago. It provides excellent preparation of students for careers in research and the profession of Psychology. Students from the postgraduate programme have achieved national and international recognition and awards and a number have gone on to positions in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, UK and the USA.
For further information go to the Department of Psychology.
Recent Deposits
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The rabbit hole before Wonderland: The nature of university students’ alcohol use during the transition to university.
For new students, university is a wonderland of opportunity. But the first few weeks of the university experience are typified by change, stress, and uncertainty. From a health promotion perspective, the first few weeks ... -
Drawing from the past to learn tomorrow
Humans are unique in their ability to use tools to produce works which communicate information about 3D objects through 2D drawings. Drawings give us insight into the origins of our species, our uniqueness amongst animals, ... -
Retroactive Interference of an Operant Discrimination induced by exposure to a Pavlovian-Conditioning Task: Task specific and neuronal factors
Retroactive interference (RI) is a phenomenon where a new learning experience interferes with the recollection of a previous one. This phenomenon has been mainly studied in rodents using behaviourally conflicting contextual ... -
Using TDCS to improve working memory: can metaplasticity protocols boost benefits?
Introduction: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive electrical brain stimulation technique that has been used extensively over prefrontal cortex in an effort to enhance verbal working memory (WM). ... -
Innocent until proven guilty: The effect of truncated testimony and deliberation on jury decision-making
Many countries, including New Zealand, now allow for children’s evidence to be provided by alternative means, rather than requiring them to be physically present in the courtroom. The opportunity for children to provide ... -
Effect of Exercise on the ACC-OFC Network and Implications for Cost-Benefit Decision Making
Increasing evidence demonstrates that physical exercise (PE) improves cognitive functioning. Improvements are particularly noted in executive functioning – a subset of cognition including functions such as cost-benefit ... -
Cognitive functioning of patients who develop delirium after cardiac surgery
In the present study the cognitive outcomes of cardiac surgery were examined in patients who did or did not develop delirium early post-operatively. The study expanded on previous research by investigating: (1) the ... -
In Plane Sight: Distraction and Object Detection in Simulated Flights
Human factors and ergonomics (HF/E) research continues to demonstrate that humans are not infallible, in particular increased attentional demands can impair an individual’s ability to react to incoming information. ... -
Promoting Healthy Brain Ageing: Potential Benefits of Physical Activity and Volunteering
Cognitive decline, especially for those higher-order functions that allow us to do things like focus our attention, solve problems, hold information in mind, and inhibit unwanted actions, is a normal part of ageing. However, ... -
Focus on the task at hand: Contextual bias in the forensic examination of handwriting.
Forensic science evidence is a crucial part of the criminal justice system, and forensic examiners have long been held in high regard due to their ability to link suspects to crimes in an objective and scientifically ... -
"Thrown to the Wolves": Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Youth's Perceptions of their Mental Health Experiences and Support
Youth with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) identities are over-represented in negative mental health statistics. Current literature indicates support for mental health difficulties is difficult for ... -
The long and the short of it? An explanation of the spacing effect over long time scales
The spacing effect is the observation that repetitions spaced out in time produce better learning and retention than repetitions massed closer together in time. There has been a long history of research on the spacing ... -
Rich Reading and Reminiscing: Benefits of Parent-Preschooler Interactions for Children’s Developing Language, Behavioural Regulation, and Socio-Emotional Competencies
Given the importance of the preschool years in the development of children’s language, behavioural regulation and socio-emotional competencies, the purpose of this thesis was to empirically examine relations between ... -
Critical perspectives on the diversity of research into sexualities and health in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Thinking outside the boxes
In this article we provide a critical narrative review of the diverse contemporary research into sexualities and health in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We outline the specific colonial context of Aotearoa/New Zealand and the ... -
Aspects of Self in Schizotypy: Basic and Narrative Sense of Self among Individuals at Psychometric Risk for Schizophrenia
The contemporary approach to detecting and studying schizophrenia, known as operational psychiatry, reduces the disease to a list of perceived and inferred signs and symptoms. Advocates of the phenomenological approach to ... -
Investigating the Interaction between Motivation and Cognition in the Maternal Immune Activation Model of Schizophrenia Risk
Finding an animal model of schizophrenia that displays both reliability and validity is a difficult task. The Maternal Immune Activation (MIA) model is an animal model that mimics an epidemiological risk factor of ... -
Theta activations associated with goal-conflict processing : evidence for the revised "Behavioral Inhibition System"
In the theory of the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), Gray and McNaughton (2000) classified events that produce or inhibit goal-directed behaviour into two affective categories: approach versus avoidance. We expenence ... -
Stepping stones to others' minds : the relation between maternal mental and non-mental state input and social understanding in 15-, 24, and 33 month-old children
Recent research has shown that children under two years demonstrate some early social understanding. Previous research has also demonstrated that mother talk about mental states is a factor in older preschoolers' later ... -
Deception Detection: Where do I look, Upper Face or Lower Face?
Human’s ability to detect deception has an unsettling result of around chance detection (Depaulo et al., 2003; Bond & DePaulo, 2008). Both Experiment 1 and 2 tracked participant’s eye fixations during the process of detecting ... -
Exploring University Students’ Alcohol Consumption, Consequences, Motives, and Protective Behavioural Strategies during Re-Orientation Week and the Semester
Problematic alcohol consumption is an issue for university students around the world and there is growing interest in interventions targeting student drinking. To date, however, these interventions show limited effectiveness ...