BPS Psychology4Students

What a fantastically inspiring and interesting day at the British Psychological Society's Psychology4Students event!

Sheffield was a lovely location with it's modern charm, festive lights, pretty water features and cute market.

Before the event had even started, the amount of freebies signaled that it was going to be a good day; BPS notepaper and a torch pen, along with a free copy of The Psychologist magazine is certainly nothing to moan about!

Jim McKenna from Leeds Metropolitan University kicked off the day with his energetic talk on the Psychology of Behaviour Change. He emphasised the importance of taking small steps in order to make greater changes. The bigger the change, the less likely it is that success will follow. This information definitely has practical applications to my life.
Jim McKenna stated that we use Psychology every day and that we have stone age brains living a 21st century life!
I learned that the brain can be changed by exercise, mental stimulation, diet, sleep (9 hours of it! I'm not getting enough oops) and surprise. Neuroplasticity is the capacity of the brain to continually change depending on experience and neurogenesis is the growth of new brain cells (which is boosted by exercise!) Thoughts can change brain structure - "repeated thoughts are like rivers cutting through rock." Brain connections in a novice vs. expert = Cobwebs vs. cables! Brains are amazing! However, they are lazy too. Our brains naturally want to work by habit, making us 'cognitive misers' in an 'autopilot daze'.
"When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive". After showing us a 'magic' trick to demonstrate attention, Jim McKenna explained that there are 3 types of attention: alertness (to affirm/question), engagement (showing we care), capacity (to do required thinking). attention = recruitment and adherence.

Dopamine lollipops!

"Emotion drives attention drives learning drives performance." I loved the idea of 'Dopamine lollipops!' Doing things you enjoy means more rewards and more dopamine lollipops! Yum!
According to the Broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion, one bad day averages 3 lost days of creativity. We all need more of these dopamine lollipops in our lives it seems!
It is also suggested that willpower, fueled by glycogen, controlled by the pre-frontal cortex, is a finite resource.
Kurt Lewin: B=f(PE) i.e. behaviour = function of (person in environment).

The Brain Rules!

Jim McKenna explained the practical applications of this research, for example, the 'puzzle technique' in advertising (people pay attention because they are forced to solve a puzzle), changing playgrounds (children don't know how to play nowadays), building more physical activity into work lives (small steps towards behaviour changes, e.g. walk@work scheme), stairs in Barcelona where you can read a story if you climb them, bicycles in a hotel that reward your use with free meals, psychologists designing phones and more public health interventions.
Jim left us with the idea that there are three brain states: 'no brain' state (habit, unaware), '1 brain' state (full concentration on one task) and '2 brain' state (concentration split across different areas).
This was a great start to the day and a fascinating, dynamic talk.


Next up was Helen Fisher from the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, talking about Childhood Psychotic Symptoms: Developmental hiccup or bad omen?
The talk began with the demonstration that we are all slightly psychotic but its okay and normal! Helen Fisher talked about the Continuum model of psychosis, which suggests psychosis ranges from magical ideas/strange experiences to full blown psychotic disorders and explained what the psychotic symptoms are, including hallucinations, delusions and disorganised thoughts. She even showed us what it's like to have a visual hallucination! The bizarre phenomenon of waxy flexibility was of particular interest to me.
According to Helen Fisher, psychotic symptoms are a transient phenomena for most children. But does this suggest they will have future problems? The Dunedin New Zealand longitudinal study is investigating this. It has been very successful, with 96% still in the study after almost 4 decades. Children were interviewed at age 11 about psychotic symptoms, then interviews were repeated at intervals throughout their lives in order to check for a diagnosis. Results show that children with strong psychotic symptoms are 7.2x more likely to have schizophrenia, and 1.5x more likely to have depression or anxiety. In fact, there is only one person with psychotic symptoms at 11 who has no diagnosis at 38.
There are many reasons why children may suffer psychotic symptoms, including genetics, brain connections, trauma and sleep problems. These reasons are not mutually exclusive.
The best part about this research is that it has practical applications. Maybe in the future we will be able to screen for symptoms in childhood and provide early intervention for mental health problems!
Successful research like this is extremely inspiring to me!
Helen Fisher also described her main reason for getting involved in Psychology is because she was nosy, which I can relate to! She told us funny stories about interviewing people about Viagra on one of her first research projects - I guess I've got things like this to look forward to as a young psychologist!


The next talk was by Clinical Psychologist Stephen Hellett about Psychotherapy for Compulsive Hoarding Disorder. Since I had never heard of this disorder before, this was very intriguing to me. While many mental health disorders have internal symptoms, this one differs in that its symptoms are external; its an environmental problem. Also, because this disorder is egosyntonic (i.e. consistent with one's sense of self) often sufferers do not seek help. To demonstrate how objects hold feelings for people suffering this disorder, Stephen Hellett told us a story about a woman who was unable to leave a feather behind on a beach because of the memories it represented. People can have co-morbid OCD with hoarding disorder, or just the hoarding disorder. The DSM's diagnostic criteria for hoarding disorder includes: issues with discard, distress with discard, accumulation in living space and clinical symptoms of distress. Hoarders tend to live alone and not leave their houses.

The House of a Compulsive Hoarder

Stephen Hellett then explained to us how he goes about treating people with this disorder. This treatment is a form of CBT and its effectiveness is measured using single case experimental design. Discard is measured in volume (amount of binbags) and in frequency of discard, while clutter is measured using video footage and a grading scale. Self-report measures are also used, such as the Saving Inventory, Compulsive Acquisition scale, and Beck's Depression Inventory. There are many problems to be overcome, such as getting patients to accept and comply with treatment, the tiny evidence base, problems with measuring effectiveness, difficulties with co-morbidity, long term effectiveness of treatment, shame in patients and churning (in which items are moved around the house, rather than discarded). It has been found that the treatment can be successful, however it is difficult to generalise from the experimental design used and further research is required. This shows how some areas of psychology need much more attention paid to them and that we still have so much to discover. Steven Hellett states that, with hoarding disorder, there needs to be less stigma, less shame and less forced clearing.

After a lunch break, in which we got to look at some exhibitions (including guessing the number of Skittles in jar as a demonstration of how occupational psychologists encourage team work to solve problems, and recognising the face of a criminal using a computer programme developed by forensic psychologists to improve witness/victim recounts), Almuth McDowall, an occupational psychologist at the University of Surrey talked about Work-Life Balance in UK Police.
Almuth McDowall emphasised the importance of work-life balance and how it is of big concern to employers and causes more problems than stress. There have been decades of research on the subject, but, unfortunately, "decades of research don't equal decades of good solutions". In the police force, there are challenges to WLB, such as the spending review, the high risk nature of the job, work-family conflict (illustrated by a heart-breaking story of a police woman who, on her first day back after maternity leave, had to investigate a case of cot death) and bad press. A poor WLB can be a potential cause for burnout and we need research with practical implications; prevention and cures are required. Research into this area uses both quantitative and qualitative methods including behaviour elicitation through interviews > card sort and cluster and refine > survey analysis.
Occupational psychology is an area I've not really considered much but this talk showed me how it can be interesting and important. It led me to think about the subtle but apparent links between AS Business Studies and Psychology. It shows me how pretty much any area of study can be linked to psychology since it is such a prominent topic.
Almuth McDowall told us about the unusual path she took towards psychology (first trained in health and fitness) and how her brief work in retail showed her that, in order to emphasise as an occupational psychologist, you need to know what its like to hate your job!
"In order to go into psychology, you need respect for the human mind and a love of people".

The last talk of the day certainly cheered us all up! Blue-haired Caspar Addyman explained The Seriously Fun Science of Laughing Babies and demonstrated how its important to also focus on positive things in Psychology and not just consider when things go wrong! He showed us many adorable videos and ended the day on a high note.

Laughing babies were an adorable end to a great day!

Babylaughter.net is a website set up by Caspar Addyman and others at the Birkbeck Babylab, which encourages parents to complete questionnaires and submit videos. Results show that the average age of the first smile is 0-1 month and first laugh is 3 months. These smiles occur when the babies are happy and are genuine smiles (not just trapped wind as some suggest). It has also been reported that the smiling reflex is apparent in the womb!
Smiling and laughing for babies is a form of social interaction. Laughing comes before first words and is a form of communication, which suggests why babies laugh more than adults.
Casper Addyman told us that the funniest game for babies is Peekaboo which serves as a form of interaction and practise for turn taking in conversation. However, while younger babies enjoy the game because of its element of surprise, at 18 months old, the child knows a reaction is needed for the game to work and so laughs for this reason. Babies may also laugh with success, in a similar style to a mad scientist, when learning something new!
Although there has been a lot of research on the topic, there are still many mysteries of baby laughter; there's not always adult explanations for what babies do. Also, does laughter help babies learn language?
Laughing is an interesting subject, especially in babies. It is a social function (it's universal and we laugh more in company). "Laughter is the shortest distance between two people". This talk showed the importance of developmental psychology and studying babies in order to understand human beings.

I also enjoyed the involvement on Twitter: I probably overused the #psy4stu however, I did get retweeted by the BPS, which is a bit of a claim to fame!
https://twitter.com/BPSConference

Overall, this was a brilliant event!