Psychology

Project

This is a Ngā Motu Whakahī scholarship specifically targeted toward students who whakapapa Māori or are of Pacific heritage.

Becoming Sexual Beings is a website developed following extensive research into mātauranga Māori and rangatahi lived experiences. It is designed to support rangatahi on a journey of self-discovery and awareness when embarking on intimate relationships.

The role

For this project, we hope to work with a student who can extend this resource to a print version, including sequencing material, layout, selecting relevant images, seeking rangatahi review, making changes, and publishing. For more information, see https://www.becomingsexualbeings.org/

Project

This is a Ngā Motu Whakahī scholarship specifically targeted toward students who whakapapa Māori or are of Pacific heritage.

The role

Pacific wellbeing is holistic and multi-dimensional, often expressed through metaphors in ethnic-specific or broader Pacific models. This project will review literature from Aotearoa and the Pacific—academic articles, reports, theses, and policies—to identify key dimensions, values, and principles that underpin Pacific models of health and wellbeing.

Ideal student

The project will be well suited to students who have a strong interest in Pacific wellbeing and/or Pacific research.

Required skills

Strong communication skills (verbal, written) are necessary. Ideal applicants should be independent, self-motivated, with demonstrated initiative and time management skills. As well as having attention to detail, and being open to research and technical training.

Project

Two students

This is a Ngā Motu Whakahī scholarship specifically targeted toward students who whakapapa Māori or are of Pacific heritage.

This project builds on existing research collation and organisation of Indigenous data sovereignty resources.

The role

Students will create an Indigenous data sovereignty Memorandum to guide current research-active staff and students in the Faculty of Science. The Memorandum will be shared with the Associate Deans Research, Māori, and Pacific and the Dean of Science for endorsement.

Ideal student

Applicants should have an interest in Indigenous data sovereignty, experience in academic writing and gathering and organising documents. You will work with members of the School of Psychology and a fellow summer student to complete this project.

Project

‘O le Toe Ulutaia: A Bibliography of Pasifika and Psychology Research is a resource developed in the School of Psychology that is now in its eighth year.

The role

In this summer project the student will review databases for relevant Pacific psychological research from 2022 to current and thematically organise included articles using a Fonofale framework.

Project

This is a Ngā Motu Whakahī scholarship specifically targeted toward students who whakapapa Māori or are of Pacific heritage.

This project has two components: the relative weighting of each component will depend on the student’s skill-set and interests:
1) Analyse brain imaging data from the Dementia Prevention Research Clinic (DPRC) to investigate how Alzheimer’s Disease affects the brain (supervised by Reece)
2) Work with Sam and Reece to develop culturally sensitive strategies to increase the participation of the Pacific community in the DPRC.

Ideal student
This project is suitable for a Pacific student with an interest in neuroscience and/or cultural psychology.

Project

Work as part of a large team on a national longitudinal panel study. Help prepare a report on how mental health, attitudes and values, and other psychological outcomes have changed over time in New Zealand. Read more about the NZAVS here: https://osf.io/75snb/wiki/home/

Ideal student

This project is suitable for a psychology student intending to continue with post-grad study in social or clinical psychology.

Project

Applicants should have an interest in healthcare, but no prior knowledge is required to work with this passionate team of healthcare professionals (speech-language therapists and laryngologists) in the Swallow and Voice Research Lab.

The role

Swallowing difficulties are common in stroke and injury/surgery to the head and neck. Yet, they remain a relatively new field of medicine.

Skills gained

This project will provide students with skills in medical research and reading health records of patients with swallowing difficulties – both adults and children.

Project

This project asks what infants understand about sounds they hear, such as speech and music, by measuring eye movements, heart rate, and electrodermal in the laboratory with babies and parents.

Skills gained

Students will gain experience in a developmental science lab, including recruitment, data collection, and data processing. Experience with infants/children is helpful but not required.

If you are interested in working on this project, email Dr Mehr to request a meeting. Only approved candidates can be considered for this role.

Project

Māori data sovereignty refers to the rights Māori have to data that relates to Māori, and how it is designed, collected, accessed, interpreted, protected, and used.

The role

Currently, there is a need to upskill the staffing and student body at Waipapa Taumata Rau. This scholarship provides an opportunity for a student to engage with and create a modalized collated Māori data sovereignty resource accessible to staff and students active in research.

Requirements

Applicants should have interest in Māori data sovereignty and a willingness to learn skills in data organisation.

Project

Pacific data sovereignty refers to the rights Pacific peoples in Aotearoa have to data that relates to them, and how it is designed, collected, accessed, interpreted, protected, and used.

The role

Currently, there is a need to upskill the staffing and student body at Waipapa Taumata Rau. This scholarship provides an opportunity for a student to engage with and create a modalized collated Pacific data sovereignty resource accessible to staff and students active in research.

Requirements

Applicants should have interest in Pacific data sovereignty and a willingness to learn skills in data organisation.

Project

Work as part of the behaviour lab team on projects exploring how potential future events influence choice in pigeons and humans, and assist with the running of the pigeon lab (full training provided).

Requirement

The successful applicant should have taken PSYCH309 or a similar course in behavioural psychology.

Project

Artificial intelligence offers a unique view into animal behaviour which is useful for understanding basic behavioural processes, and for exploring factors that influence welfare and adaptation of animals in captivity.

The role

This project involves assisting researchers in training artificial intelligence to detect and measure specific behaviours in video footage of sheep, lambs, calves, and/or pigeons. The successful applicant will also assist with the running of the pigeon lab (full training provided).

A background in artificial intelligence/programming is not required (but would open up more advanced opportunities for the right applicant).

Project

This project examines the ways in which attachment insecurities and couples’ conflict spills over to undermine coparenting interactions with children.

The role

The summer scholar will complete behavioural coding of couples’ behavior within family interactions with their children. The resulting data could be used to test the role of attachment insecurities and conflict communication on family interactions and children (e.g. emotion regulation, peer cooperation vs. aggression, health and wellbeing). The aim is to identify the factors that buffer these likely harmful effects.

Project

This project examines the degree to which couples can engage in conflict to improve problems and then emotionally and behaviourally recover (conflict recovery) in order to be responsive within family interactions with their children.

The role

The summer scholar will complete behavioural coding of behaviour within family interactions. The resulting data could be used to test the role of couples’ conflict recovery on couples outcomes and/or children’s socio-emotional skills (e.g. emotion regulation, peer cooperation vs. aggression, health and wellbeing).

Project

Why are music and language found in all societies, but in such diverse forms?

The role

For this project, students will help to analyse data from participants speaking and singing in NZ English and compare them with similar data from other languages around the world.

Ideal student

Understanding and experience running behavioural experiments and/or analysing acoustic data are helpful but not necessarily essential.

If you are interested, please reach out EARLY via email (patrick.savage@auckland.ac.nz) to give time to interview potential candidates.

Project

Virtual Reality presents exciting new opportunities to study how processes across perception, cognition, and action unfold and interact. Our lab uses VR headsets and high-speed motion-tracking cameras to record participants’ hand, eye, and body movements as they perform tasks designed to measure fundamental aspects of attention, executive control, and memory. For example, this summer we plan to use VR to investigate how ADHD impacts attention in a task known as the Attentional Network Test.

The role

In this project, the student will work alongside Dr. Erb and post-graduate students to run experimental sessions with participants, process hand- and eye-tracking data, and learn some of the basics of data analysis.

If you are interested in this project, please feel free to email Dr. Erb at the email address provided above.

Project

A commonly reported difficulty for people with Major Neurocognitive Disorder (NCD; including those with brain injury and/or dementia) is confabulation or misremembering. Confabulating has been linked with reduced treatment compliance and engagement, as well as with increased caregiver strain or burden.

The role

The aim of this project is to understand misremembering from a behavioural perspective.

Ideal student
This project would benefit a student who is interested in studying in the Behaviour Analysis Programme at the postgraduate level. Having undertaken papers with a behavioural component at the undergraduate level would be an advantage, as would interest and experience in analysing survey and behavioural data.

Project

Two students

The ability to work together with others underpins much of our everyday lives and develops substantially across childhood. This project examines how parents’ responsiveness and engagement in cooperative interactions links to children’s cooperative tendencies.

The role

The scholar will work with another scholar to code parents’ behaviour in interactions with each other (mother-father interactions) or as a family (mother-father-child interactions). Scholars may receive training on other research tasks (e.g., scheduling appointments, participant recruitment, data entry). Scholars will need to complete a confidentiality agreement.

Project

Early caregiving experiences provide the foundation for children to grow into competent, integrated members of society. Central to these experiences is caregiver responsiveness. Caregivers’ sensitivity to their child’s ongoing behaviour.

The role

This project will involve helping with data collection and coding of caregiver-infant interactions in our ongoing studies. The scholar will help with our experimental sessions and learn about the steps involved in developmental research.

This may involve being available on certain weekends.

Experience with young children would be helpful. Scholars will need to complete a confidentiality agreement.

Project

Using data from the Dementia Prevention Research Clinic, this project will investigate how different methodological approaches affect the estimates of properties of white matter tract properties.

The role

The student will be responsible for assessing brain images of white-matter tracts in the brain, and training will be provided in the relevant software packages.

Ideal student

The student would ideally be someone interested in neuroscience and neurodegenerative diseases. Some programming skills would be good, but not required.

Project

This project is a meta-analysis that examines which employment condition is most harmful to people’s wellbeing: actual job loss, the threat of job loss (i.e., job insecurity), or underemployment.

The role

Your responsibilities will include locating, screening, and coding relevant articles. Preference will be given to scholars with strong attention to detail, excellent organizational skills, and a basic background in psychology.

Skills gained

You will gain valuable research experience in literature searching, data extraction, and coding

Project

This project aims to systematically review and quantitatively synthesise existing empirical studies on the effectiveness of feedback interventions in workplace settings.

The role

Your tasks include screening articles and coding study characteristics and effect sizes.

Ideal student

Preferences will be given to students with strong academic reading skills, attention to detail, and basic background in psychology.

Skills gained

You will gain hands-on research experience in evidence synthesis and meta-analytic methods.