Student-authored papers
Students on the BSc Psychology course have had significant research success, with the following publications resulting from research carried out during their degrees:
2021
One of our 2021 graduates, Aleks Saunders, has co-authored a systematic review published in Lancet Psychiatry entitled “Harnessing emotional mental imagery to reduce anxiety and depression in young people: an integrative review of progress and promise.” Aleks worked on this paper as part of a summer Internship under the supervision of Dr Jennifer Lau. You can read the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(21)00195-4
Grace Williamson, a 2020 graduate, has co-authored a paper under the supervision of her final year Research Project supervisor Dr Gemma Gordon. Her study explored participants’ experiences of transcranial direct current stimulation for binge eating disorder, and has been published in the European Eating Disorders Review. You can read the paper here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/erv.2859
Another 2020 graduate, Alice Clack, has co-authored a paper reporting a controlled trial into assessment and feedback types which she carried out as part of her final year Research Project supervised by Dr Ellie Dommett. Alice helped to design the trial, collected and analysed the data, and her research project writeup was used as the first draft of the paper, which has been published in the journal Education Sciences. You can read it here: https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11090468
A lovely collaborative effort from a group of BSc Psychology students under the supervision of Dr Charlotte Russell has led to a paper “Type of encoded material and age modulate the relationship between episodic recall of visual perspective and autobiographical memory”, published in the Journal of Cognitive Psychology. Elisa Militaru, Ines Sanguino, Neila Zaara and Matilde Boccanera all contributed to this paper as part of their Research Experience Studentships. You can read the paper here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2021.1922417
Charlotte Skipp, who graduated in 2020, has had a co-authored paper published in the journal Education Sciences as a result of an Extended Essay which she carried out under the supervision of Dr Ellie Dommett. This paper, entitled "Understanding and Addressing the Deficiencies in UK Mathematics Education: Taking an International Perspective" was drafted by Ellie and Charlotte, based on Charlotte’s extended essay that she completed during her final year. You can read the paper here: https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11030141
One of our 2020 graduates, NT Nguyen, undertook a King’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship with Dr Ellie Dommett which has resulted in a co-authored paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. The paper is entitled “Understanding the relationship between safety beliefs and knowledge for cognitive enhancers in UK university students” and Drs Benjamin Gardner and Tim Rakow are also co-authors. You can read the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244865
2020
Amina Saadi, one of our 2020 graduates, worked on a project with Dr Wijnand van Tilburg during a King’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship and then subsequently during a Research Experience Studentship. Their paper, entitled “Citizen vain? Exposure to the UK citizenship test predicts milder demands from immigrants across the political spectrum”, has just been published in the British Journal of Social Psychology. You can read it here: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12433
Final year Research Project students Camilla Restelli and Nga Yiu (Yoyo) Cheung who graduated from the BSc Psychology in 2019 have co-authored a paper in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review with their final year project supervisor Dr Tim Rakow. This paper adds to a growing body of findings that challenge the conventional wisdom about loss aversion (the notion that people give more weight to losses than to gains of the equivalent size when making decisions). The authors found that the degree to which people show loss aversion depends greatly on the context, and they could even set up circumstances under which reverse loss aversion was seen for most participants. You can read the paper here: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01775-y
A new paper, published in the British Journal of Health Psychology, reports a study undertaken in 2019-20 by final year Research Project students Olivia Bailey, Janine Jennings, and Chun Yuen, under the supervision of Dr Ben Gardner. The study showed that, after controlling for the effect of intentions and habits, the frequency with which university students drink alcohol on nights out could be predicted by how frequently they contact friends to arrange a night out, and how habitually they drink alone before going out. This suggests that attempts to reduce alcohol consumption should focus on discouraging people from engaging in actions that precede later consumption. You can read the article here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjhp.12489
Narges Ahmadilari, a 2019-20 Research Experience Studentship awardee, has had a paper published in the journal Acta Psychologica reporting the results of a study testing the effect of self-focus on imitative behaviour. This project was supervised by PhD student Divyush Khemka and Dr Caroline Catmur and you can read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103194
Two 2018-19 final year Research Project students, Ioanna Louca and Danai Mourouzis, along with two 2019-20 Research Experience Studentship awardees, Alessandra Calabrese and Aeysha Fida, have had a paper published in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise reporting work supervised by Dr Ben Gardner. This paper looks at how people interpret sitting-time questionnaires. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2020.101718
Sophie Webb, one of our 2019 graduates, had a co-authored paper published based on the work she carried out for her final year Research Project supervised by Dr Melanie Palmer and Professor Tony Charman. This paper reports a new measure of child and parenting behaviour in children with autism and was published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04506-3
Aleks Saunders, one of our 2019-20 Placement Year students, had a first author article published in the journal BMJ Simulation & Technology Enhanced Learning. The article is entitled 'Empowering healthcare professionals to return to work through simulation training: addressing psychosocial needs' and links into the work Aleks has been doing on his placement year with the Maudsley Simulation & Learning Centre. You can view the article here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjstel-2019-000566
Dr Ellie Dommett has published a paper with some of her BSc Psychology final year Research Project students from 2017-18 and 2018-19 (Hazel Ho, Genevieve Sykes, Peter Szekely and Paula Adamopoulos) on learning approaches and attitudes to smart drugs. This paper was published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs: https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2020.1742949
2019
Sophie Webb, one of our 2019 graduates, co-authored a publication in the journal Autism based on work she carried out for her final year Research Project supervised by Dr Melanie Palmer and Professor Tony Charman. This article reviews outcomes following parent interventions for children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties in autism spectrum disorders and can be viewed here: https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361319830042
Timea Szentgyorgyi, one of our 2018-19 Placement Year students, had a co-authored publication in the journal Scientific Reports: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51023-0 based on work she carried out during her placement year. The article is entitled “Neural correlates of positive and negative symptoms through the illness course: an fMRI study in early psychosis and chronic schizophrenia”.
Two of 2019’s graduating students, Serena Shiu and Megan Hall, carried out a final year Research Project under the supervision of PhD student Jennifer Murphy and Dr Caroline Catmur, which has now been published in the journal Biological Psychology: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2019.107765 . This paper investigated interoception, in this case the perception of one’s own heartbeat. The studies showed that the measurement device used to measure participants’ heartbeats affects how accurately the participants can perceive their own heartbeats, which will have an impact on how interoception is measured in future studies.
Another project supervised by Jennifer Murphy, working with Dr Caroline Catmur and Dr Geoff Bird, was also published over the summer, in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1747021819859514 . Co-authors on this paper were Ed Millgate and Hayley Geary, who completed this study as part of a Research Experience Studentship. This study investigated how the ability to recognise others’ emotions is affected by age, IQ, and depression in adults aged between 20 and 90 years. Ed and Hayley were in our first cohort of BSc Psychology students and graduated in 2018.
Another Research Experience Studentship project, this time supervised by PhD student Jane Conway working with Dr Caroline Catmur and Dr Geoff Bird, has resulted in a publication for Sofia Koletsi and Nicholas Bronitt, also from our first (2018) BSc Psychology student cohort. This paper has been published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000704 . This paper provides the first data in support of a new theory of how we represent other people’s minds, suggesting that we may represent other people in a multidimensional ‘mind-space’, with implications for our understanding of social interaction.
Final year Research Project students Muna Yusuf, Asha Jagatia, Zaynah Mahmood, and Emma McCabe worked with Dr Ben Gardner on a qualitative interview study during 2017-18. The project focused on understanding office workers' interpretations of news stories about the dangers of sitting time and how to reduce it. The paper, entitled "How do office workers respond to media coverage of sitting?", has been published in the journal Occupational Medicine. It is available to download here: https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqz084 .
Another research paper co-authored by a KCL BSc Psychology student has been accepted for publication. This paper, published in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-019-0851-0 reports seven studies on how people mentally represent sitting. It argues that people rarely view sitting as 'sitting', but rather see it as one part of a broader sequence of more meaningful behaviours (e.g. 'getting my work done'). Three of the studies were worked on by Sahana Quail (BSc Psychology 2015-19) as part of a King's Undergraduate Research Fellowship undertaken with Dr Ben Gardner. The paper has important implications for understanding and reducing sitting time, which is a behaviour of considerable interest to health psychologists at present.
2018
Mehr Panjwani and Priya Tulcidas have published a report on the role and experiences of academics in supporting student mental health. You can read the report here: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/86824919/Student_Mental_Health_The_Role_and_Experience_of_Academics.pdf. This report resulted from work they carried out as part of a Research Experience Studentship with Dr Nicola Byrom.
Sofia Koletsi, Eva Lymberopoulos, and Elisa Militaru, all three of whom were part of our 2018 graduating cohort of BSc Psychology alumni, have had a paper accepted following work they carried out as part of a Research Experience Studentship during their second year of study, under the supervision of PhD student Sophie Sowden, working with Dr Caroline Catmur and Dr Geoff Bird. The paper, "Quantifying compliance and acceptance through public and private social conformity”, is published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2018.08.009 and describes the development of a new method for testing social conformity.
BSc students Hayley Geary and Ed Millgate from our 2018 graduating cohort had another paper accepted following work they carried out as part of a Research Experience Studentship with Jenny Murphy, Dr Caroline Catmur, and Dr Geoff Bird. The paper is entitled "Knowledge of resting heart rate mediates the relationship between intelligence and the heartbeat counting task” and is published in the journal Biological Psychology: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2018.01.012.
2017
BSc students Edward Millgate and Hayley Geary from our 2018 graduating cohort had a paper accepted following work they carried out with Jenny Murphy, Dr Caroline Catmur, and Dr Geoff Bird as part of a Research Experience Studentship. The paper is entitled: “Direct and indirect effects of age on interoceptive accuracy and awareness across the adult lifespan” and is published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1339-z
Sahana Shankar and Saima Begum published a paper in the journal Pilot and Feasibility Studies with Dr Ben Gardner following work they carried out as part of a Research Experience Studentship. The paper, which reports promising findings from a pilot trial of an intervention to reduce sitting time in older adults, is available here: https://pilotfeasibilitystudies.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40814-017-0139-6 .