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Summer Vacation Placements 2013

We are able to offer some student vacation placements to undertake a project of research conducting human behavioural studies.  Depending on the project, there may also be the opportunity to learn about neuroimaging techniques.  Details of the individual projects can be found below.

Placements will be for an 8 week period between July and September – the exact timing of any placement will be agreed in advance with the supervisor.

You will have, or be in the process of obtaining a degree in psychology or a related discipline, and show a keen interest in obtaining research experience.  Previous experience in conducting behavioural experiments would be useful, but full training will be given.

The salary will be in the region of £13,470 – £14,894 per annum.  On site car and bicycle parking is available.

Applications for these vacancies should be made preferably by email to summer.placement@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk.  Please include a current CV and a covering letter indicating which project you are interested in, plus contact details of at least two referees.  Alternatively you can write to Debbie Davies, HR Administrator, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge, CB2 7EF.

Closing date: 17th May 2013

Projects

Project 1: Effects of context on pitch perception
Project 2: Temporal integration and temporal weighting of cross-domain decision variables
Project 3: Does perceived self-discrepancy determine the emotional consequences that follow positive memory recall in depression?
Project 4: Mood instability after positive imagery in young people scoring high for bipolar traits

Project 1: Effects of context on pitch perception

Supervised by Dr John Deeks

Research into visual and haptic perception has shown that observers weight different sources of information according to their reliability, in a way that can be modelled using a Bayesian framework. However, although our analysis of some classic auditory experiments suggests that they could be interpreted in this way, auditory theory invariably treats the auditory system as a passive, automatic mechanism. We propose a simple experiment to test whether listeners apply different weights to different sources of pitch information, according to their perceived reliability. The two sources of information will be a) a pure tone, and b) a so-called “Huggins pitch”, which is produced by playing a noise that is identical at the two ears except for a narrow frequency region where the two noise samples are independent. It arises from the same mechanisms as in a real-life situation where a tone can only be heard by virtue of it arising from a different location from a masking noise. This cue is unreliable in reverberant surroundings. To pitch of the pure tone and Huggins stimulus will be pitted against each other, so that one goes up and the other goes down, and listeners will report the direction of shift. The pitch stimuli will be presented after a carrier sentence that is processed to sound either reverberant or “dry”, and we will determine whether listeners have a reduced tendency to follow the Huggins pitch stimulus when presented after the reverberant context.

Project 2: Temporal integration and temporal weighting of cross-domain decision variables

Supervised by Dr Jiaxiang Zhang

Two different types of decisions are common: decisions based on perceptual information, and decisions based on subjective values. In perceptual decisions, people discriminate, detect, or categorize sensory evidence and map onto appropriate responses (e.g., to brake at a red light). In value-based decisions, people select between options that differ in motivate values, such as reward, preference and expectation (e.g., to choose a new car).

These types of decision may be governed by the same, domain-general, integration mechanisms. A general problem is that sensory and value evidences in decision-making process are inherently noisy. In order to reduce the noise and facilitate accurate decisions, we can calculate a decision variable (DV) as accumulated momentary observations over time, until the DV supporting one option reaches a response threshold. However, two questions remain unsolved. First, how do people weight evidence arriving at different times to make their decisions? Second, do temporal weighting patterns generalize across perceptual-decision and value-decision domains within individual participants?

This project investigates these issues using a novel weather-prediction paradigm. Participants will be presented with fast streams of visual stimuli containing uncorrelated sensory and value-based information, and cued to perform perceptual or value-based decisions in each trial. Temporal weighting patterns will be estimated using a model-based approach and compared across the two decision tasks.

Project 3: Does perceived self-discrepancy determine the emotional consequences that follow positive memory recall in depression?

Supervised by Dr Aliza Werner-Seidler

Individuals with depression have problems effectively regulating their emotions. This project will examine the potential of positive autobiographical memories to improve mood in depression.

Studies have established that healthy individuals experience emotional benefits following the recall of positive memories, but depressed individuals do not. In fact, some studies have found that these individuals actually feel worse after recalling positive memories, possibly due to the activation of ruminative processes (e.g., Joormann, Siemer, & Gotlib, 2007). Specifically, it is suggested that recalling positive past experiences while in a depressed mood is likely to draw attention to the discrepancy between current mood state and previous happier times (Martin & Tesser, 1996). The focus on this discrepancy is hypothesised to be responsible for the activation of ruminative cognitive processes which in turn, perpetuates and worsens mood.

This project aims to test this idea by manipulating the perceived self-discrepancy of positive memories. Depressed and non-depressed participants will be asked to retrieve a positive memory of a past event that is either consistent or inconsistent with who they are today. Self-perceived discrepancy will be manipulated by asking participants to focus on how they are similar or different to the person in the memory, and will then provide mood ratings.

If, as hypothesised, perceived self-discrepancy is found to determine the emotional impact of positive memory recall, this would inform the development of therapeutic strategies capitalising on adaptive (ie., self-consistent) personal memories.

Project 4: Mood instability after positive imagery in young people scoring high for bipolar traits

Supervised by Dr Simon Blackwell

Holmes el al. (2008) proposed a model of bipolar disorder that fuels research and treatment development by the group in this area. Within this model, mental imagery plays a central role, acting as an emotional amplifier that catalyses mood instability. This mood instability is a key clinical feature of bipolar disorder.

The project aims to investigate the proposal from Holmes et al. (2008) that imagery-related abnormalities in bipolar disorder play a causal role in mood instability, and further that this will occur when emotions are amplified regardless of their negative or positive valence. We will test response to positive stimuli using a brief positive training paradigm, with imagery versus verbal versions. Healthy volunteers scoring high or low on the Mood Disorders Questionnaire (MDQ, a questionnaire that is used to identify groups with high versus low rates of hypomanic experience) will be randomly allocated to complete either the imagery or verbal-based positive bias training paradigm. The immediate effects of the training on measures of bias, mood, and behaviour, and the effect over the subsequent week on mood instability will be examined. It is predicted that the imagery (compared to the verbal) training will have greater impact on immediate mood and subsequent mood instability in the high MDQ group compared to the low MDQ group.

Holmes, E. A., Geddes, J. R., Colom, F., & Goodwin, G. M. (2008). Mental imagery as an emotional amplifier: Application to bipolar disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 46(12), 1251-1258.

 

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