Eadaoin Whelan, a PhD student in SoAP, blogs about the impact of daily stressors on health outcomes, which is the focus of her research.  In the blog Eadaoin describes how daily stress, even relatively low level stress, can cause changes to health, in part through biological stress responses, and in part by changes in behaviour that happen when people become stressed.  

Eadaoin's research focuses on adolescent health, and how the developmental period of adolescence is shaped and influenced by environmental stressors. Using the allostatic load theory, Eadaoin's research examines how emotional experiences are transformed into health outcomes, and scrutinises the unique contribution of both daily stressors as well as daily uplifts, an under-researched area of adolescent health.  Eadaoin will use biological measures (stress hormones, immune system) to capture individual health profiles, and use these with measures of health behaviours (e.g. diet, exercise, sleep) and adolescent diary-reports of daily experience to examine the impact of experiences on health. Based on the findings of this research, Eadaoin will develop and test an intervention designed to buffer the effects of negative experience and amplify the effects of positive experiences. The findings will create new opportunities to promote healthful responses to experiences in adolescence.

Dr Raegan Murphy highglights some of the work that she and colleagues have been doing in the area of gambling over the past 4 years. The team of researchers include Drs Amanda Roberts (University of Lincoln, UK), Stephen Sharman (University of East London, UK), Jason Landon (Gambling and Addictions Research Centre Faculty of Health & Environmental Sciences, New Zealand), John Turner (University of East London, UK), Sean Cowlishaw (University of Melbourne, Australia), Stephanie Meleck (National Problem Gambling Clinic, UK), Henrietta Bowden-Jones (Imperial College, UK), Robert King (University College Cork, Ireland), Jeremy Coid (Queen Mary University of London, UK) and Katie Palmer du Preez (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand).

Research psychologists from the School of Applied Psychology in UCC and affiliated researchers (Graham Gill Emerson, Prof Colin Bradley, Dr Anna Marie Naughton, Shayna Henry and with thanks to Cork Simon, Tabor Group and HSE Addiction Services South) and practitioners from a variety of charitable organisations in Ireland are working in the area of early childhood trauma and associated later life outcomes. Dr Raegan Murphy and Dr Sharon Lambert showcase some of the work in this area.

Applications now open for a funded PhD with Dr Chris McCusker.

Measuring individual change – allowing the person to take centre stage by Emma Hurley and Dr Raegan Murphy

Traditionally, psychology has tended to find a voice as a science by providing findings from large-scale studies. Psychology as a therapeutic discipline, instead, has tended to find its voice by informing us of the lived experiences of individuals. A PhD study in the School of Applied Psychology has merged the need for robust data to underpin the measured changes experienced by individuals (one person) over time. How do we stand over measures of an individual in the same way that we would measure many individuals on aggregate? Normally, statistical techniques are used to assist in inferring findings from large-scale sample studies to the larger population from which they originate. In addition, statistical techniques provide measures which account for chance factors in research design. How can N=1 samples provide us with robust data in the same way that N=1000 samples can? Emma Hurley has investigated this very question in her PhD research under the supervision of Dr Raegan Murphy. Her PhD is embedded within the broader area of dynamic assessment

Dr Jason Chan and Dr Annalisa Setti talk about their research on Multisensory Perception in older adults.

Involving children with congenital heart disease, epilepsy, brain injury and cancer, our work has elucidated behavioural and neurodevelopmental phenotypes associated with such diseases. It has highlighted an often greater role for family functioning in determining outcomes for children than disease factors and severity.

We live in a multisensory world.  Every day, we are constantly combining information from our different sensory organs to form a coherent experience

The aim of this project is to define and measure the characteristics of our outdoor lived environment which can support cognitive healthy ageing.

We are investigating how perceptual temporal efficiency can be improved in older adults using multisensory integration.