Alcatraz

I just had a friend come and visit me in my office for the first time. He made a joke about how much the office hallways made it feel like we were in the famous prison Alcatraz. Is doing a PhD really any different from being in prison?

My office hallway, actually.

I guess superficially there are a lot of similarities between being a PhD student and an inmate serving a 3 - 5 year sentence: we are put in small rooms with limited daylight, we spend long hours with nothing to do but read, we have to share basic bathroom facilities, we often eat the same food day in and day out, we might not see our families for long periods of time, we have to go through several review processes before we can “get out”, the building gets locked down after 9pm, and when you’re ready to scream you can’t out of fear that the anxious guy sitting next to you will shank you in your eye ball.

Obviously being a student is nothing like being a prisoner - I got given a brand new computer when I started, the people I share my office with are awesome, I get flown to really fun conferences at no expense of my own, and, of course, I can leave whenever I want.

The freedom and perks of being a PhD student don’t stop some people from feeling trapped, though. Even after being a PhD student for less than a year, I certainly have felt at times that I can’t leave my office when I want to, even though I’m the one who holds the key to my door.

Fortunately for me, feelings of being a PhD-prisoner are few and far between and 99% of the time I love my time at uni. I attribute a lot of the joy I have during my PhD to the fact that I took a lot of time, a whole 6 months actually, working out whether or not I wanted to do it in the first place because it is a big commitment. I also took this time to think about who I could be happy with as supervisors for years on end, because they're the closest thing to the "prison wardens".

I wasn’t planning on being preachy in this blog post, but I do feel like I have to end with this final point. If you are considering doing postgraduate research, and I highly encourage it, take the time to think about it and plan it carefully and you’ll never feel like you’re in prison!

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog?? Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

and the winner is...Science!

Last week I posted one of my favorite statistics puzzles on the blog and promised to reveal the answer this week. While writing this post it became apparent that the real trick is not solving the problem but adequately explaining the solution. Here goes...

The scenario is the following: You are on a game show and you are faced with three doors. Behind one of the doors is your dream prize (my very own lightsaber) while behind the other two doors are dud prizes (a homeopathic contraceptive). You are given the opportunity to select one of the doors and attempt to win your dream prize. After you select a door but before revealing the location of the prize, the host reveals to you one of the doors that did NOT contain the prize, leaving the door you selected and one other. The host then asks you whether you wish to stick with the door you originally selected or change your decision and choose the other remaining door.

This problem is referred to as the 'Monty Hall' problem and the question is whether a) you should stick with your original decision, b) change your decision and selected the other remaining door or c) it does not make a difference either way.

So the answer is that if you wish to increase your chances of winning your dream prize you proceed with option b). That is you should abandon the door you originally chose and select the other door. By doing this you increase your chances of winning from 33% to 66%.

There are a number of places where people can go wrong with this puzzle, however in my experience the most common response is c). That it makes no difference whether you switch or stay. This response suggests that there is an equal probability of the prize being behind each door or that you have a 50% chance of winning regardless of the door you choose. This is in fact incorrect for reasons I'll now attempt to explain.

Hopefully you can all see that to begin with, the probability of guessing the door which contains the prizes is 33% or 1 in 3. This also means that there is a 66% chance that the door you chose does not contain the prize. That is, there is a 66% chance that the prize resides behind one of the other two doors.

When the host reveals one of the doors that does not contain the prize the chance of your door containing the prize does not change, it remains at 33%. Importantly though we know that the probability that the prize is behind one of the doors is 100%. So given there are two doors remaining and the probability of your door containing the prize is 33%, the probability of the other door containing the prize must be 66%. There was a 66% chance that one of the other two doors contained the prize. Now however we know that one of those doors does not contain the prize, therefore the other door must account for the remaining 66%.

If you're not yet convinced by my solution or you're having trouble getting your head around it, imagine the exact same scenario only instead of 3 doors to guess from there are now 100 doors. Your chance of guessing the correct door is now 1% or 1 in 100. So you guess a door and then I take away 98 of the doors that did not contain the prize leaving just 2 doors. The one you chose and one other. I now ask you whether you'd like to stick with your original choice or switch doors, what do you do? You switch obviously because you know that the chance of getting it right the first time was 1 in 100 (1%). The probability in this case that the other door has the prize is 99%.

No one emailed me the correct answer which means I hold onto the used handkerchief. The good news though is that this means the prize pool doubles for the next time I post a problem. So check back in if you're eager to win the handkerchief plus an additional prize of equal or lesser value.

James

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Surviving the Second Year Blues

Have you ever had one of those dreams in which you are trying get somewhere and you can’t? I am having these dreams with increasing frequency; I think it’s my subconscious mind’s not-so-subtle hint that I’m hitting a lull in my PhD progress. Something I rather naively hadn’t realized until now is that the demands of a PhD increase as you go along. Studies start piling up; rejected manuscripts need to be rewritten and sent to another journal; resubmitted manuscripts need to be thoroughly vetted to maximize their chances of getting accepted. This may not be the case for everyone, but I have certainly found myself to be under more pressure in my second year than in my first. I’m sure also that the pressure will only increase in my final year.

Pressure can be motivating or it can cause people to freeze. I believe that the trick to dealing with the pressure of the later stages of a PhD is to do with passive and active responding. Passive responding to pressure involves withdrawing and freezing which, although dysfunctional, at least has the benefit of keeping you out of contact with the thing that is causing you anxiety. Unfortunately I think that a lot of people use this strategy (you know the ones – they’ve been here forever and their catch-cry is “I just need to run one more study before I write up…”). Active responding is harder than passive responding. It involves forward planning and strict adherence to the deadlines that you (and other people) set for yourself.

My advice to anyone who, like me, is experiencing the second year (or third year, or fourth year) blues is just to get on with it. Confront the issue head on and try to make headway on small tasks by writing up a results section here, a general introduction there. Have a serious chat with your supervisor about the direction you’re heading in and the timeline you need to meet in order to finish. And above all, don’t let it get you down. Most people feel like this at one time or another in their postgraduate degree so don’t sweat it.

First prize is a used handkerchief

I’m not going to lie, my past few weeks have been largely unproductive and uneventful. The majority, if not all off my time has quite literally been taken up marking student essays and reports. It is an incredibly boring, tedious and painful exercise and I do not wish to reminisce on the experience here. Instead I thought I’d present a statistics puzzle that I just gave to my first year statistics class and that I find very cool.

Suppose you’re on a game show and you’re given the choice to pick one of three doors. Behind each door is the prize that you’ll win. Behind one door is an infinitely cool prize (insert an infinitely cool prize of your choice), behind the other two doors are foils or dud prizes, lets say someone’s used handkerchief (not much fun). It is important to know that the host of the game show knows what is behind each door.

So lets say you pick door number 1. Before they tell you what you've won, the host then opens door number 3 and reveals a used handkerchief. The host then says to you, “Would you like to change your choice to door number 2 or stick with your original choice of door number 1?”

The question is, given the new information provided to you that door number 3 did not contain the infinitely cool prize, should you change your decision and pick door number 2, stick with your original choice of door number 1 or does it make no difference either way?

Anyway have a think about it and I'll post the answer this time next week. If you know the answer please resist from posting it in the comments section. First person to email me the correct answer though will win one of my very own used handkerchiefs. Get to it!

James

jdretell@gmail.com

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog?? Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Conf Doc!

Last week I submitted my confirmation document, or ‘conf doc’ as we say in the business. It was daunting and I’m glad it’s over. The thing is, you’re not actually a ‘PhD Candidate’ until you have been ‘confirmed’. (Until recently, I assumed the PhD confirmation process was just like the catholic one.)

So I’m still a lowly ‘Provisional PhD Candidate’ until I’m told otherwise. To become a PhD Candidate I need to submit my conf doc to a small group of academics (my readers) who will decide my fate: Am I on track to producing research worthy of the Dr. title? Do I need a few more months and a bit more guidance? Or maybe I’m just not cut out for a PhD.

The conf doc is ten pages with a few sections:

• Proposal (i.e. “What are you gonna do?”)
• Literature Review (i.e. “Surely someone has done it before?”) 
• Feasibility (i.e. “Is this even possible?”)
• Importance (i.e. “Will anyone care?”)
• Funding (i.e. “Don’t ask for more money.”)
• Timeline (i.e. “How long will all this take?”)
• Work Completed (i.e. “What the hell have you been doing for the past 12 months!?”)

So after all this I’ll be confirmed right? Unfortunately not. I now have to turn this document into an hour long seminar for my readers, other academics, PhD students, and guests from other universities. As if that weren’t enough, the audience will then leave the room and I’ll be interviewed.

I present in two weeks on Thursday 3rd June at 12pm 2.30pm (Sir Llew Edwards Bldg 14 Room 115) and you’re welcome to come along. Or you can wait for my next post when I’ll reveal whether or not I’ve been confirmed... 

Matt Thompson

The purpose of a lanyard.

After being harassed about it for about 4 months now, I’ve finally decided to contribute to the Psych blog, to represent the clinical psych student component of the school.

This year I switched to the combined PhD program- clinical masters and PhD. My first year in the clinical program was the most enlightening, testing, rewarding, challenging, busy, enjoyable, and awful year of my life. But, having lived through it, and now being able to take a breather from the fast pace of the clinical program and complete it at a slower pace whilst starting my research, I can look back and see how much I learned and how far I’ve come!

It is nerve-wracking starting the program, organizing registration, college membership, blue cards, text-books, etc. and over coming your anxiety about actually seeing your first REAL client- “what forms do they need to sign?” “Do I tell them about the limits of confidentiality first, or after I’ve made polite chit-chat?”, “what if they tell me they are suicidal?”, “what if my pen runs out?”, “where can I sit so I can see the clock?”, “How do I stop them talking off topic without seeming rude?”, “what if I haven’t ticked all the boxes on my intake form?”, “what if I forget how to speak?”, “Have I asked a double-barrelled question?”, “Is my posture making me look warm and engaged?” “what if they don’t like me?” etc. etc.

Then once that’s all sorted out, you find yourself juggling 5 classes, case presentations, 8 clients, research projects, supervision requirements, MSATs, exams, assignments, board paper-work requirements, client reports, progress notes, and discharge summaries, plus trying to have a life, and make a living somehow. Actually the last 2 tend to not happen very often- you find yourself having a chocolate bar and a diet coke for lunch, and then by the time you get home at 11pm, you’re too tired to make dinner, you have had no time or money to go to the supermarket, and you know you have to be in there at uni again by 7 am anyway so you just collapse into bed (after a shower- although sometimes personal hygiene slips a bit as well) !

Ok, so maybe it’s a little bit of an exaggeration, some weeks are better than others, but this story was true for too high a number of my weeks last year for my liking.

But you do learn a lot about organization, time management, the importance of work-life balance (through learning first hand what happens when it’s absent), psychopathology (again, through first-hand experience with anxiety, mood disorders, stress, and sometimes a little psychosis), and of course a little bit about interpersonal skills, psychological treatments, and about the field in general.



I was asked at lunch today, why I felt I needed a lanyard with all of my keys, swipe cards etc on it. And I would like to clarify this for everyone, so that you don’t think it’s just the clinical psychs being pretentious. When you are in the situation as described above, it is very easy to forget things, leave things places, forget your clients’ names, write the wrong names in reports, be disorganized, lose things, AND lock yourself out of places at 7am or 11pm when there’s no-one around to let you in.

SO, the purpose of a lanyard is to decrease the chance of this happening, or even just to decrease the chance of having to walk back to where you came from to get your photocopy card because you forgot it (these things tend to be enough to tip you over the edge when you’re in this situation). You only have to remember one thing and you have instant access to your St Lucia clinic key, Herston clinic key, computer lab swipe card, photocopy card, locker key, and USB. The importance of this was demonstrated one morning last year when I didn’t have my lanyard for whatever reason. It was 7am and I had a presentation on “Theory of Mind and the Frontal Lobes” for neuroanatomy class at 9am (Which was barely started), I arrived at the computer labs, put my stuff down and went to make a cup of tea. Without my swipe card. I had to wait about 40 minutes for someone to arrive and let me in and my presentation suffered greatly!

This year, although I am finding myself with a much better work-life balance ( I actually get weekends and the occasional evening off!), I am still juggling clients, coursework, therapy research projects, supervision, board requirements, reports, paperwork, a folio, and that little thing called a PhD. So my lanyard now has:
Photocopy card
Swipe card for UQ
Swipe card for Royal Children’s where I have a desk
Key for office at UQ
UQ clinic key
Herston clinic key
Locker key
Filing cabinet key
And USB.

It is not because I like to look important- it is because my brain is so scattered and in about 10 thousand places at once, so my lanyard is my safety blanket that keeps me slightly sane and with everything in the right spot.

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

I bet you can't stop your eyes from moving.

I’m fascinated by the control we have over our eye movements, because we first use our eyes to explore the world around us. Our control over what our eyes do largely commands how we complete complex behaviours like driving a car.

Some of our eye movements are automatic and made reflexively in response to some visual event. Imagine, for example, standing on a train platform and looking across the tracks to a friend on a platform opposite you. If a train flies past between you and your friend, your eyes can’t help but to flick back and forth, following parts of the carriages. This is an eye reflex called optokinetic nystagmus, or OKN for short.

To induce OKN in the lab, I get people to sit in a pitch black room and stare at the centre of a computer monitor while I track their eyes with the eye tracker. I tell participants that their goal is to stare directly at the centre of the monitor. But then I display 800 little white dots on the screen, all moving at the same speed from left to right at a rate of a few centimetres per second. Because there is nothing in the centre of the monitor for participants to keep their eyes fixed on, their OKN kicks in. My participants end up following a single dot smoothly for a short period of time until their eyes flick in the opposite direction to start following a new dot - this pattern repeats over and over regardless of how much the participants try to keep their eyes still.

Testing OKN in the eye tracker (the ghostly face at the far right is Morgan).

Below, I’ve graphed examples of what the data end up looking like, but let me quickly explain the graph before you click on the picture to see it in full size! Along the x-axis is time, and the y-axis plots how much the eyes move left and right. If someone kept their eyes perfectly still, the graph would be a straight line along the value “640”. Values higher than 640 represent eye movements to the right, and lower values are movements to the left. Each coloured plot represents about 2 seconds of OKN from a different participant in a different condition.

Eye data showing less and less OKN for different conditions -- click the image to make it bigger and see the paragraph above the photo for more detail about the graph.

You can see that, over time, participants eyes smoothly move right, and then really quickly flick back to left, making a saw-tooth like pattern. This pattern is most obvious for the red plot, and becomes less for the purple, and even less for the blue plots. The decrease in OKN over these examples is because of an experimental manipulation I employed to help people keep their eyes still - even from this small amount of data it’s obvious that it worked!

The results from my experiments will hopefully inform our knowledge about how motion and eye movements affect our perceptual organisation of the world.

-Will
www.willjharrison.com

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog?? Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Hands-on research.

I may be just an RA (research assistant) but I get to do some pretty cool stuff. Take fingerprinting, for example. Part of my job is to collect fingerprints from people so we can use those prints in experiments where we look at how people process complex visual stimuli.

Believe it or not, taking someone’s fingerprints is actually pretty difficult. You have to (gently) twist a person’s arm in really awkward ways to roll their fingers evenly across a 10-print card. At the moment I’m pretty crap. Here are some examples of crap print rolling:

A twitch during the roll (the vertical smudges in the centre), and too much pressure (the smudging along the top)

Not enough ink covering the finger

Too much ink (coupled with too much pressure)

Sigh. Looks like I've lots of practice ahead of me...

- Morgan

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Your research on a poster

Wen and Steph at EPC!

Will, Matt and James have all shared their wonderful experiences at the latest Experimental Psychology Conference in Melbourne. I thought I would shed some light on what the girls got up to during this conference.

Just like Will, Matt and James, Stephanie Goodhew and I made our way to Melbourne for the 2010 Experimental Psychology Conference. It was Steph's first time visiting Melbourne, so this trip was very exciting for both of us (me being from Melbourne, I was excited to show Steph around). We were also extremely excited about the conference dinner, because it was held at the Melbourne Zoo this year. The conference was held at The University of Melbourne, which is situated in an inner northern suburb of Melbourne called Parkville. Steph and I shared a room near the university, which made our trip extremely affordable.

At the conference, Steph presented a talk, and I presented a poster. Presenting a poster is another way to get your research out there without the pressures of doing a talk. Because a poster presentation is more informal than a talk presentation, I was able to get a lot of individual feedback about my research. Unlike talks that were scheduled throughout the day, the poster session was one big session scheduled in the evening of the first day. At the beginning of the poster session, I stood quietly in front of my poster, felt very nervous about what I was going to say and how I was going to answer the questions that people may have had about my research. As I waited for people to make their ways toward my poster, a very well known researcher in the area of faces walked towards me and asked: "Would you like to tell me about your research?" Filled with excitement and anxiety, I walked her through my poster. From then on, I became more confident, and all my nerves turned into excitement and enthusiasm.

This conference was a great opportunity for me to present my research and gain invaluable feedback. It was an eye opener for me. I was inspired by all the experimental research that people are involved in around Australia and New Zealand. And last but not least, it was wonderful to have shared this experience with Steph.

--Wen

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog?? Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

CV Envy...When aiming high hurts.

I’ve been lucky to meet some amazing researchers of late. You know the ones. Those that fill your nerdy little heart with joy when they present the neat findings of their incredibly clever studies, that inspire you to take on 3 extra lines of research even though every 2.5 minutes of the next 5 weeks are already scheduled into your Google calendar, and get you daydreaming of a lecturing job at Cambridge when you should be focussing on writing a first draft of a manuscript.

Meeting researchers we admire is one of the best parts of being a PhD student, the chance to hear about exciting new findings, and run your own ideas past the people who edit the journals you fantasise about publishing in, and generally get yourself known to those who might offer you research collaboration and job opportunities in the future. The worst thing about high achievers? Looking at their CVs.

However irrational it might be, I somehow can’t help but look up the CVs of people I admire, and directly compare myself and my achievements to these high flyers. Somehow my tres-high impact, lonely, single publication in Journal of Environmental Psychology starts to look incredibly dubious next to double-digit Psych Science articles. Media mentions in the Bundaberg News Mail look a little lame next to The New York Times. I start to question why I’m here, to feel like a fraud, and wonder if I will ever succeed in academia at all. A perfect example of the optimally de-motivating upward comparison, or so I thought.


I mentioned these feeling of inadequacy to my supervisor. How the sight of the endless lines on superstar CVs sometimes make you feel like assuming the foetal position on the floor of the office and ignoring your dubiously consistent data altogether. She laughed at me, and proceeded to assure me that many of the most successful academics she knows were on the verge of tears after perusing the CV of one recent international visitor. It turns out that practically no one is immune to the hazards of CV envy; that us postgrads should relax and not worry about comparing ourselves to unbelievable levels of productivity and brilliance. I found this thought comforting for about 5 minutes. But soon the urge to plan new studies, pursue collaborations and apply for overseas awards took over. When I look around the department the other postgrads also seem too busy getting started on that new line of research, pitching their papers at top journals, and applying for prestigious overseas conferences to dwell on their academic inferiority for long. Perhaps a little CV envy doesn’t hurt after all.

--Rachel


Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

On perpetual questions, the meaning of life, and the risks associated with starting a controversial line of sex research

“Love is the answer, but while you’re waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions” Woody Allen

The hands down, knock down, down and dirty best thing about being a researcher is the fact that you not only get to wonder, you also get to know. What excites me about my PhD, and now my job, is that the I can turn things I always wanted to know into research questions, and research questions into studies, and studies into answers (or hints), and answers into articles.

As such, my guiding passion for racial equality has led me to research into race-relations. After several years of researching almost exclusively on race-based topics, and having just conquered my fear of saying the word ‘race’ in public, and engaging in this hot topic of research, I have recently decided to turn my SPSS hand to something a bit different.

In particular, I have always been fascinated by the disparity between men and women’s sexuality, and the need to talk about women’s sexuality honestly and openly. Recent articles that I have read about female anorgasmia (inability to orgasm or difficulty reaching orgasm), and related evolutionary articles about the evolutionary uselessness of the female orgasm compounded my interest. Accordingly, a few weeks ago I launched an online sex survey that asked members of the general public to tell me the ins and outs of their sexual experience. This survey has been an incredible challenge, and an unrivaled learning experience. I found it very confronting to gather my materials, compose my questions, and disseminate the study with my name publicly attached to it. Likewise, participants reported that it was good, but also scary and shocking, to be asked these questions and answer them with candour.

About a week after I launched this study I attended what I think is my 6^th conference of the Society for Australasian Social Psychologists, in Perth. Being the sort of ambitious tool that I am, I decided to present the preliminary results of my sex research – results of a study that had been running for less than a week.

On the plane, sleep deprived and wary, I downloaded the results from about 500 participants, and set to analyzing. At first glance, the findings were extremely promising and interesting (I am currently writing a report for participants). Despite this, however, I was not thrilled. While they were very interesting and above all important to me, it became salient that I would be presenting on salacious and shocking data, that really delved into sex – not just vague sexual attitudes but specific sexual practices and knowledge.

“Oh no!” my inner dialogue began. “They will think that I am a strumpet!”

“No, no.” I reasoned back to myself. “They will understand that it is valuable research, even if it is a little sexy.”

Never to be defeated, my defeatist self replied “Who are you kidding – you are going to be banned from returning to another conference, and also will be stoned to death I bet.”

Thus soundly beaten, I continued working on my slides, dreading the mocking from my peers that I knew would come.

So what happened? Well, yes, my talk raised eyebrows. It made people giggle, and it made people blush. After the talk, it seemed to disinhibit people as well – various other academics and PhD students approached me and told me ribald jokes. At first glance it looked like maybe I was right – that sex research simply couldn’t be taken seriously, and that this was risky departure for me career-wise.

BUT WAIT! Since the conference I have been inundated by e-mails from top-level academics from the conference who have told me that they have been thinking about my research, and have some suggestions about what factors may explain my findings. I have had about six offers to read drafts of my first article on this topic from people that I previously did not engage with. Members of the general public have sent me over 50 e-mails, thanking me for talking about this topic, telling me how personally important it is to them, and inviting me along to small group meetings at hospitals and public venues so that my next survey may better tap in to the wide range of factors that make up who we are sexually.

Going down this research road has been TERRIFYING, challenging, and already, exciting and rewarding. Presenting this research at the conference, and publicly outing this line of research before I felt ready was a risk. But hey! I think that now is a good time to remind myself (and you), that this is what is so EXPLETIVE DELETED sensational about being a researcher! We get to ask and answer the questions that we are intrinsically interested in. We get to gather knowledge about the crazy phenomena of human existence and feed it back to the public. Hoorah for research! Knee-knockingly frightening, overwhelmingly important and interesting, and a challenge worth taking.

How to publish, or: No seriously, how to publish?

There are many unspoken rules to abide by as a PhD student, but one trumps them all: publish, publish, publish. Gone are the days when people committed four years of their lives to write a tome, only to spend a further 6–12 months condensing it into publishable chunks. As ‘thesis by publication’ becomes the normative standard, we are expected to write up and submit papers throughout our PhD. But how can we maximize our chances of getting published? As someone who has received my fair share of rejections, this naturally is a question I am keen to answer.

Recently I attended the national social psychology conference and got some advice from the experts. I attended a postgraduate workshop on publishing given by Professor Shinobu Kitayama, editor of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. He summarized what he saw as the qualities of good empirical papers: they make a substantive advance to the literature (i.e., are novel and interesting), have a clear theoretical story, with data that are rigorously (and appropriately) analysed. Naturally, you need good data to get into top journals, but Professor Kitayama’s point seemed to be that you can get away with a lot by telling a good story – it’s up to you to make people interested in your topic (even if you lost interest ages ago) and want to read more.

I think this is great advice, but as a social scientist I’m interested in actual data. I attended another talk by Dr. Nick Haslam who has analysed the publishing strategies of successful and unsuccessful academics. There were some great pearls of wisdom in this talk, like the fact that there is a non-linear relationship between being first author on a paper and academic success: having a minority of first-author papers is beneficial career-wise, but too much solo publishing is actually detrimental. The same goes for publishing in teams: a bit is good, but you shouldn’t always be one of many. Perhaps most interestingly, he found that quantity of publications predicts impact better than quality. So the message is to publish lots, not necessarily to publish well!

I feel a little better informed now than when I started, but the answer of how to publish is still elusive. What you can do is maximize your chances by following advice from people who know–your supervisor, other academics, and your peers. Look at the programs of the conferences you attend; you will always find roundtables, workshops, and seminars devoted to this topic. I find this sort of comforting; it just goes to show that no one really has it all figured out. There’s no magic formula you can follow to get published, but if anyone figures it out please let me know!

Katie Greenaway


Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??
Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Risk and Reward

The Psyc Conference -- Part III

Last week I travelled to Melbourne to present a poster at the 37^th Experimental Psychology Conference (EPC). If you read my previous post you’ll know that my lead up to the conference was by no means smooth sailing. The weeks prior to the conference were filled with sleepless nights as I rushed to finalise experiments and piece together my presentation. On top of this I was racked with anxiety at the thought of presenting my research to my peers and having it ripped to pieces.

I am here to report that contrary to my fears the conference was an incredibly rewarding and enjoyable experience I’ll not soon forget. My expectations were exceeded and my fears were quickly quashed. There was a wonderful relaxed vibe that really fostered the communication and discussion of ideas. It wasn’t long before my anxiety of presenting was transformed into excitement.

It was incredibly cool discussing my research with people who seemed genuinely interested and intrigued by it. Suddenly the stresses of the previous weeks seemed so irrelevant and trivial. If this was the pay off then I’d gladly go through them all over again. In retrospect I’m thankful that I was able to overcome my anxieties and take advantage of the opportunity to promote my work and meet new people.

So if like me you harbour an inferiority complex and think who would ever be interested in what I do, give your head a shake and jump at the first opportunity you get to put yourself and your work out there.

So now I’m back in Brisbane brimming with confidence from the conference and unscathed by the experience. Unfortunately though my poster didn’t survive the trip back home. Not because it was ripped to pieces by my peers but because I left it sitting at gate 7 at Melbourne’s domestic airport...

Click here to see Part 1!!!

Click here to see Part 2!!!

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??
Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

“You’re too comfortable…but I like it.”

 The Psyc Conference -- Part II

At first it was strange sitting at the table with high ranking academics at the EPC dinner. I felt unworthy, and a little out of place. But it soon became clear that they weren’t interested in maintaining my delusions of inferiority. They, like me, just wanted to relax after an exhausting day of talks.

So I gradually became less inhibited and, before I knew it, I was speaking as though I’d known these people for years and we started to banter. But I thought I’d gone too far when one of the top vision scientists in Australia said to me, “You’re too comfortable…but I like it.” I shat myself and thought I’d overstepped the mark.

But he went on to tell a story about the late great physicist Richard Feynman. As a grad-student, Feynman stood-up and questioned the Nobel prize-winning Niels Bohr during his talk. Feynman later shat himself when he was ushered to Bohr’s chambers for “discussion.”

But it turns out that Bohr sought out Feynman because most physicists were too in awe of Bohr to argue with him. Feynman had no such inhibitions and said he felt as much respect for Bohr as anyone else, but once anyone got him talking about physics, he would become so focused he forgot about social niceties.

Academic etiquette in the 40s was a little different to the way things are now. I doubt a first-year PhD student like me would be allowed to sit at the same table as full Professors, let alone engage in some pretty risqué banter. I love this change and really appreciate being treated like an equal. (Some have even added me on facebook!)

So whoever your academic heros are, when you read their awesome work and see the impressive things they’ve achieved it’s easy to forget, they’re just people — don’t be afraid of getting too comfortable ; )

Matt Thompson
mbthompson.com

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Conference hangovers are so worth it.

 The Psyc Conference -- Part I

Matt, James and I just returned from Melbourne where we attended my first Experimental Psychology Conference, and it has been one of the best experiences of my life! I had my nerves tested when I presented some data to a packed lecture theatre of academics from Australia and New Zealand, and then I had my liver tested when I celebrated my presentation on the first night, the conference dinner on the second night, and the goodbye party on the final night!

As great as some of the science discussions were, what really made the experience for me was all the crazy interactions outside of the conference. The conference dinner was certainly a highlight - a room full of experimental psychologists with a never-ending amount of beer, wine, and champagne... My abs got a great workout from laughing at all the things coming from academics' mouths!

As if partying until 4am with renowned academics wasn’t enough (one academic even stayed out until 6.30am on the morning of his own presentation!), but we also got to see what PhD students from other universities were like. They were all great - talking to students from Victoria and Western Australia for the first time was as easy as talking to my old friends down the hall at UQ. For example, at one bar where we were surrounded by people dressed in suits and drinking expensive wines, I spent 30 minutes talking with a student from the University of Western Australia about whether or not to include error bars on graphs! That’s pretty special (albeit extremely nerdy).

The UWA girls with Matt and I. From left: Matt, Rachel, Kat, Vanessa, and me.

I think the best part of the conference was the range of experience of the young researchers. Research assistants, Honours, Masters and PhD students all got involved, and all were really impressive. If you hear about a conference coming up that is in your area of interest - find a way to go! You don’t even need to present data - you can just go and see the sort of research being done by other people and make new contacts.

Three days later I’m still exhausted and I feel like I haven’t slept for a year. But it was all worth it - I’ve made some great new friends with students and academics, and I got some great feedback about my own research. It was also great fun to share this experience with two friends, Matt and James, and it makes me wonder what we’ll get up to in the future!

James and me... this must have been one of the 4am moments!

-Will
www.willjharrison.com

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Love and some Hate

On wednesday next week I am heading down to Melbourne for the 37th Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference (EPC). Although I've been to conferences before, this is the first conference at which I am presenting my own research and I won't lie, I'm incredibly nervous. The last few weeks have been a mad rush to get experiments finalised, data analysed and a coherent presentation put together.

Two weeks ago I was running what I thought would be my last participant through an experiment I plan to present next week at EPC. This particular participant was quite interested in the experiment and afterwards was eager to know more about what I was studying (always nice when someone shows an interest in what you're doing). I proceeded to debrief them.

As I was explaining the results the participant commented on my conditions and suggested that I had excluded one from my analysis. Slightly alarmed by this remark I attempted to clarify what they meant.

Their response: "I'm sure I saw such and such happen during the experiment."

I immediately felt sick, the participant had alluded to a potential confound in my design and there were only two possible explanations. Either they were asleep during the experiment and dreamt what they saw or there was an error in my code. Participants falling asleep during my experiments is not as unlikely as it may sound, it happens quite regularly. This particular participant seemed quite switched on though and I was immediately suspicious of the latter.

I opened the experiment and begun scouring through the code for the error. It didn't take long for my fears to be confirmed, the error was obvious. I began to stress a little. Without going into the details of the error I clung to the hope that it hadn't shown up in the data despite my last participant's testimony tending to refute the possibility. There is was though, where I had previously overlooked it, the error was blatantly obvious. I began to stress a lot.

So a long story short, I have been scrambling to rerun this experiment plus an additional experiment as well as trying to compile a presentation for EPC. Since monday this week I have run 41 participants across two and a half experiments. this includes running an entire experiment (7 hours of testing) on wednesday. The anxiety of potentially finding null results wreaked havoc on my sleeping patterns throughout the week.

I can report though that the results look fantastic for now and my presentation is coming along nicely. So onward to EPC where my results and presentation will likely be ripped to pieces by the academic elite. More sleepless nights ahead I suspect.


James Retell
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Psyc update - 30th March 2010

First semester is well under way and the research is getting done!! I thought I’d give a quick summary of what’s been going on over the last month or so.

Conference Preparation
The first big local (Australasian) psych conference is coming up in a week or so. The Experimental Psychology Conference (EPC) is to be held in Melbourne this year and a large contingent of cognitive and perception psychs are busy getting their presentations and posters in order, booking flights and accommodation, and sussing out what mischief they can get up to when south of the border. While I’m not attending (Matt, Will, and James are, so stay tuned to see what they trouble they cause in Melbourne), I am keenly monitoring the process of creating a poster because I'll hopefully be presenting one in San Francisco later this year!

Confirmations
The first major milestone of the PhD is confirmation and tends to happen about a year into the program. Up until this point you aren’t technically a PhD student, you are a PhD candidate, which essentially means the university hasn’t committed to you or your research yet. You need to convince a panel, representing the school/faculty/university, that your planned research is interesting, innovative, and feasible enough to continue. Since a lot of the latest batch of PhDs started about a year ago we are having a lot of PhD confirmation talks. The ones I’ve seen so far have gone really well. It’s great to hear what projects other people have been beavering away at. I’ve found attending conftalks helps me overcome the facade of pretending to understand what my friends are researching. There are one of two outcomes for me: either I finally understand what they do, with the help of their finely-tuned explanations and diagrams, OR, I still don’t understand, which by this point is no longer hidden by the facade but exposed as glaring fact (“What do you mean you don’t get it? You were at my conftalk, right?!”)

Assassins’ League
I can’t give too much away about this, it’s terribly secretive (though I’ve already been chastised for blabbing to anyone who’ll listen). It’s a tense game of cat-and-mouse that lasts for two weeks, played exclusively among psych students and faculty, and not for the feint-hearted. I won’t say any more about the actual game but I will say that it’s a really fun way to get to know others in the school. Currently playing are a bunch of second-years, some masters students, some PhD students and some RAs. You never know who’s coming for you... Anyway, if you are interested in finding out more please visit this site.

So, fun times around the school. Almost makes a fella wanna do a PhD ;)

- Morgan

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Freudian Slippers

Academia. My Dad was a UQ man, my husband is an academic, and I've been at Uni myself on and off since the mid-1980s - so I can't say I wasn't warned. For those who are curious, I'll attempt to describe a week in the life of a new lecturer.

Monday. Is supposed to be my writing day. My dropping-the-kids working-from-home writing-without-interruptions day. We're way into March and this is the first Monday that it's actually worked out. And I've woken up with a splitting headache and an upset stomach. Luckily I've just joined a writing group based on the helpful guide "How to Write a Lot". These writing groups are springing up all over the School: small cells of academics huddle together and contract to meet specific writing goals during the week to which they hold one another accountable. So I can't crawl back to bed and be sick. Must. meet. writing. goals.

Tuesday. Start the day with an hour of clinical supervision. I love clinical supervision. You get to work on fascinating cases without the direct responsibility for treatment. Today's cases include a teenager who has been badly bullied for his effeminate ways. I watch a DVD of a session in which the teenager is explaining his anger management strategies to my intern on the whiteboard. I'm proud of my intern. This client is going to be ok.

Lunchtime: RHD committee meeting (that's research higher degree). Due to the large numbers of RHD students in Psychology, including the large number of out-of-load PhD students (a parlous state that I myself am familiar with), Eric and co have worked up a set of milestones to help students keep on track: confirmation; mid-candidature review and thesis review. It's anxiety provoking for the students and its anxiety provoking for me because I now have 4 milestone meetings to chair and I'm falling behind. I wonder if it's possible to be out-of-load in my committee job?

Wednesday. Big day. There are 25 first year undergrads due to start my "Tuned In" program today – a music based emotion regulation program designed as an alternative to CBT. My Doctorate student Carly is leading six groups (3 now and 3 wait listed control groups) and we have interns as co-therapist in each group. I’m nervous about how the Uni students will respond to the program. Carly texts on Wed evening that they all turned up and gave the activities a go: drawing their imagery; describing their body sensations; the meaning of lyrics. Relief.

Meanwhile I'm giving an evening lecture to 150 third year students on Psychoanalysis. Freud’s theories are easily criticised in this place and time so I have to work hard to make them relevant and interesting. I consider wearing my Freudian slippers to the lecture but my superego wins and they end up on a slide instead.

Thursday. Meetings. An interesting meeting with Kim (the Director of Clinical Programs) and a visiting academic from NZ who is touring clinical programs here and in the UK to benchmark the way clinical training is done. Listening to Kim it’s hard not to catch his enthusiasm about what we're doing.

Friday. Start revising a rejected paper in preparation for our writing group at 2. Everyone has met their goal this week and Natalie gives us immediate chocolate rewards. More clinical supervision and then finally 4pm Friday comes around – staff club time. Everyone said the first year with all new teaching, new systems and policies to figure out is a killer. It is. But the rewards are great. So far so good anyway....

-- Gen Dingle

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BRAINS!

Check. This. Out.

It’s not every day you literally get to see inside your own head. Last year I participated in a brain imaging study. My friend who was running the study just emailed me videos of the scan of my brain and I can’t stop watching them!!!

The first video is a scan going from the front of my face to the back of my head. You should see the vague outline of my nose, then eyes, then frontal lobes appear. At this point I’d like to thank my frontal lobes for giving me the ability to create blogs and such a hilarious personality.


This next video slices through my head horizontally starting from the left side. The first thing you’ll see is my left ear, and then the left side of my brain. If you pause the video about half way, you should see my corpus callosum. It’s the white thing that can be found right in the middle of my head and kinda looks like the top of a mushroom. It’s also the bit that connects the two sides of the brain. You might remember my blog post where I mentioned that Kim Peek was missing this part of his brain!


I was quite hesitant to post these videos because I feel like there’s something really personal about them. It’s kinda like people are seeing me stripped of my clothes, but in a completely different way to me being left naked. If consciousness is purely a result of what’s happening inside the brain, then these videos are really the most bare I can be. Weird.

Will Harrison. (Click here for my personal website.)

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Tutoring Take Two

There’s something very energising about the start of a new academic year. For those of us not yet jaded by the research process it brings with it the prospect of new and exciting research ideas and results. For others it may invoke stresses and anxieties as you prepare to meet the challenges of yet another fast paced and hectic year. Adding to the excitement and the atmosphere of a new year is of course the return of students, in particular the new cohort of first year students who, this semester, have flooded the department in unprecedented numbers.

Last semester I was given the opportunity to tutor first year statistics and this semester I’m back at it again, out of the lab and into the tutorial room. Although I have no experience with which to make the comparisons, it would seem that tutoring first year students is in some ways quite unique. Unlike students in later years, first year students enter the tutorial room unsure of what to expect, filled with the anxieties of entering a foreign environment yet with an eagerness and enthusiasm to learn.

For a large number of my students, my tutorials represent their first experience in a University learning environment. This lack of experience and freedom from expectation as to the format a tutor and tutorial should follow, affords me a certain freedom to define my role as a tutor and the forum in which I teach.

I believe it’s very important to create an environment where students feel free and confident to question anything and everything I say. I know when I went through undergraduate I always viewed my tutors as exceptionally intelligent people (which I’m sure for the most part they were) but also that they were always right and that they new better than me. Certainly from my experience as a tutor this could not be further from the truth.

So if you’re a student reading this, my advice is to never let your curiosity go unsatisfied. Tutors are there to facilitate your learning not to “teach” you the material. So engage with your tutors and take the opportunity to put forward your own ideas. As well as benefiting the students it’s also a rewarding experience as a tutor when my class engages with me in discussion of ideas.

If I haven’t been made to look silly in front of my class at some stage throughout the semester then my students haven’t done their job. I can report though that I’ve been caught out more than once this semester already and it’s only the second week of tutorials...

All the best for the year folks

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Share the Experience

The best thing about a PhD is the people you get to work with. I share an office with human factors and organisational researchers, I lunch with cognitive neuroscientists, and argue at a journal club with evolutionary psychologists. This diversity creates unique opportunities.

Recently, the HFES-UQ Student Chapter organised a field trip to a local hospital to check out Tobi's PhD work. Tobi has set up a patient simulator in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). It's a $50,000 doll that breathes, blinks, has a pulse, takes real drugs, and pisses its pants. I thought the study was amazing but, of course, this was all in a day's work for Tobi.  

The PhD is often a very personal experience. But I think sharing that experience with fellow post-grads, who are likely suffering the same problems and experiencing the same daily roller coaster of emotions as you, is really important. So show your comrades your lab, clinic or field study. It may seem mundane to you, but I'm sure we'll be sufficiently impressed by your brilliance!

Matthew B. Thompson
President HFES-UQ

The control room -- eye tracker, head-cam, two HD field cameras and the mannequin control system.

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Questions unanswered

Stuck in the middle ground between earning a degree and starting a PhD means I am often easily confused. I, therefore, ask lots of questions. Actually, scratch that. I would like to ask lots of questions. I don’t, which is probably linked to my initial comment about being easily confused. I don’t often know what’s a sensible question, which, when asked, announces to my peers that I am an intellectual, or what’s an insensible question, which, when asked, exposes me as the fraud I am.

What stops me asking questions? Many things, though mostly it’s my interior monologue second-guessing myself. Is my question relevant? Has it already been covered? Am I wasting time by asking it? Should I already know the answer? How can I put my question into words? How do I put it into words AND sound smart?!

This cloud of confusion suddenly lifted in spectacular form last night. I, along with 1500 of Brisbane’s atheists, evolutionists, and critical thinkers, enjoyed a public lecture by Prof. Richard Dawkins about his current book ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’. Richard went through each chapter of his book and summarised the most important parts for us/those that hadn’t read the book. It was when he covered Chapter 11: History written all over us, that my ears piqued. Richard said:

Look at whales, they have land animal written all over them. Even look at humans, they have aquatic animal written all over them.

Aquatic..?! He didn’t mean....?! No....

From this point on I had it. I was going to ask Richard Dawkins a question!! My interior monologue started playing up but I fought hard to quash it. I spent the rest of the Richard’s lecture thinking about how to ask my question and how to look suitably intelligent in the process (half of the psychology school was there after all :P ) The lecture finished and the audience was called up to microphones located at the front of the auditorium to ask questions. After a moment of deliberation I shot up and squirmed through the stalls to get to the microphone. Knee-caps shaking with anxiety, but with a calm and collected face on, I waited for my turn.

In the end I didn’t get to ask the question. Richard could obviously tell I was going to say something amazingly profound to stump him, or that I was going say something profoundly stupid and look like an idiot. Either way he called the question-asking short, just before I could ask mine. For those of you that care I’ve written it in full below.

Relating this back to asking questions, I actually learnt during my undergraduate degree that asking questions in lectures is a really efficient way of clearing up areas of uncertainty. Somewhere between graduating and floating around the psych halls I forgot that. Maybe it’s my (falsely-held?) belief that once you have a degree you’re actually supposed to know something and I felt I didn’t. I’m not so sure. Regardless, students should ask lots and lots of questions and I will endeavor to do the same.

- Morgan

“Richard. When you were talking about the huge history within us you mentioned that whales have land animal written all over them and that we even have aquatic animal written all over us. I trust you didn’t mean aquatic in the sense of Elaine Morgan’s aquatic ape theory (theory in second sense)? I understand this has been rigorously challenged and perhaps debunked. Do you think that interpretations of evolution, such as Elaine’s, hinder or help the communication of evolution to the lay-person?”

I’ll have what she’s having: Faking it in academia

At start of the second year of my PhD my supervisor told me it was TIME. I don’t want to name names, or implicate anyone in criminal activity, so for the sake of maintaining anonymity let’s just call my supervisor “Dr Winnifred Rose Louis”. Winnifred said to me, “Barlow, my good lass, it’s time you presented your research at a conference.”

The conference was the annual meeting of the Society of Australasian Social Psychologists, and the year was 2006. Obeying the command of my supervisor, if not the dictates of my own heart, I accordingly submitted an abstract, was accepted, packed my bags, and jetted off to Canberra. I was not, however, a calm little academic.

My main concerns ran as follows:

1. My research will be publically debunked.
2. My inadequate grasp of the intricacies of the literature will be brought to light.
3. The other academics will hate me.
4. I will hate the other academics.
5. My shyness will overcome me in all possible embarrassing ways.
6. In general, I will be discovered for the fraud that I am.

Now these fears may come as quite the surprise to those of you who know me. I am aware that nowadays my booming voice regularly rings through the psychology halls, engaged in lively debate with my fellow empiricists. But back them I was a green, wet behind the ears PhD student, and I was absolutely paralyzed by fear at the thought of strategically networking with fellow researchers. It was primarily that word, “networking”, that had me running scared. I had always thought of networking as a bit of a dirty word – I had an idea that it consisted of schmoozing and romancing people that I did not like or respect, all in a desperate bid to get ahead.

And yet… Winnifred had spoken and I had obeyed. There I was, at my first conference, sick to my stomach, and feeling woefully inadequate. My talk had, despite my worst fears, gone off smoothly. I came across as a passionate and engaged young thing, and those who attended were universally kind. That was all well and good, but the highly structured presentation was not what I was worried about – it was what was coming next.

“There are some people that would like to meet you Fiona, and that I would like you to meet.” Winnifred told me after my talk. “We are about to go and have drinks at the poster session, I will introduce you to them there.” Mouth dry and heart thumping, I escaped to my room. The social setting of the poster session made everything worse – how could I do this!?

It was at that point I made a critical decision – I would fake confidence. I would breathe deeply, straighten my back, beam a smile, and talk clearly. I, in my shy and retiring way might not be able to make it through networking, but I could certainly make an attempt at faking.

Both Men and Women can fake it.

Decision made, I marched down the stairs to the conference room where the poster session was being held, and bravely faced the waiting masses. What transpired next was a blur. Winnifred shepherded me from person to person, and eventually, confident that I could navigate the vicinity on my own, left me. To my surprise, that afternoon and in to the night I met a range of fantastic people – researchers who like me were passionate about racism and discrimination, people who could chat about statistics and theories and the wonderful phenomena of existence that we study in psychology. Suddenly, networking wasn’t so scary or so crass – really it was just chatting to people who were interested in the same things as me, who found a joke about regression funny like I did, and who could tell me personal anecdotes about the researchers that I admired.

I still maintain friendships and collaborations with researchers that I met at that first conference. When I see them at conferences now it is like a family reunion, and I am thankful that I had the presence of mind to fake what I could not legitimately produce that first time.

To this day I still fake it – producing a facsimile of confidence when I feel none, and cracking a seemingly off-the-cuff joke in my lectures that is in fact elaborately rehearsed and ruminated about. But those times are rarer, and what was once acting has become a reality – I can genuinely enjoy conferences, dinners, networking and public speaking. I suggest that this is the way that it is for most of us. We take a while to find our feet and engage with other academics outside of the comfort zone of UQ (or even here as new PhD students!). But the benefits of engaging through public speaking and networking are intellectually stimulating, socially rewarding, and infinitely valuable for our future careers. I urge you all to attend every conference you can, to present your research in a talk rather than a poster session, and to choke down your fear and approach the academics that you would love to chat to. Although scary, I promise you that it will be worth it – and remember, clichéd as it is, faking it until you make it is a fantastic approach to take.