The APS confers a range of awards and prizes each year to honour outstanding achievements in psychology. The recipients of the 2011 APS awards are profiled below.
The Award recognises distinguished contributions to Australian psychology by psychologists at later career stage.
Trevor Waring
Conjoint Professor Trevor Waring has worked with distinction as a clinical psychologist in Australia for over four decades. His work in the public and private sectors over these years has earned him a substantial reputation as a pragmatic and effective therapist across a range of client groups and as a strong and persuasive advocate for psychology. Trevor has been instrumental on a number of professional boards and advisory groups, primarily in the Hunter Region of NSW. As a member of the Hunter Area Health Service he engaged in numerous leadership roles, including Director of Allied Health Services. These positions led him to become the Chair of the Hunter New England Medical and Dental Advisory Board and Director of the Hunter New England Health Region. The impact of his work in these roles effectively shaped the perception of psychology by the NSW Health Department. In addition, his work with the Hunter Institute of Mental Health and as President of the NSW Psychologists Registration Board is reflected in a range of positive NSW Government decisions. Trevor’s standing is acknowledged with his nomination and current Chairmanship of the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council (APAC), a Council he was instrumental in establishing. Trevor has worked extensively with the Department of Psychology and the Faculty of Medicine at Newcastle University, and has been paramount in developing and expanding external links with overseas organisations. His long and positive contribution to the University led to his election as Deputy Chancellor in 1997 and subsequently as Chancellor of the University in 2004. Trevor has also made an important contribution to the community through his ability to engage the community in discussion and debate regarding the role of psychology. He has achieved this as a patron of numerous learning centres, cancer foundations and the Samaritan’s welfare foundation. His involvement in a weekly ABC radio program on mental health continued to advance the understanding of psychology and the way in which the profession is able to make a positive and productive contribution to the community. This was recognised in 2004 when he was made a member of the Order of Australia for services to mental health and the community. Trevor has also made a valued contribution to the APS through his service on the APS Board of Directors from 2007-2009 and through his active participation on a range of APS Committees, including the influential APS Education and Training Reference Group. He was nominated a Fellow of the APS in 2004.
The Award recognises outstanding contribution to the education of psychologists in Australia over an extended period.
Geoff Cumming
Emeritus Professor Geoff Cumming conducted his first psychology experiment in his final year at school. He found that music students had more acute pitch discrimination than other students. At Monash Geoff studied science and mathematics, commencing psychology in his third year. His Honours year combined psychology and statistics. As a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford he completed a DPhil on visual masking, under the supervision of Anne Treisman. Geoff joined La Trobe University in 1974 as Lecturer in Psychology, and remained there until his retirement with a Personal Chair in 2008. His enduring research focus has been on learning, statistics and the educational use of computers. Particular interests have included young children learning to read, the learning of English as a second language, and cognitive science for intelligent computer tools for learners. Geoff has helped establish statistical cognition as a research field that studies how people understand, or misunderstand, statistical concepts, and how they interpret different presentations of statistical results. His laboratory has sought cognitive evidence so that statistical practice in psychology and numerous other disciplines can become evidence-based. Geoff’s further aim is to encourage psychology and other disciplines to recognise the serious flaws in statistical significance testing and to use, wherever possible, confidence intervals instead. In 2006 he was engaged to advise the American Psychological Association on the revision of the APA Publication Manual, and served on the Revision Working Group for Statistics. Geoff retired to write Cumming (2012), which may be the first evidence-based statistics textbook, and to finalise ESCI (Exploratory Software for Confidence Intervals).
The Award recognises excellence in scientific achievement in psychology among psychologists at early career stage.
Brock Bastian
Dr Brock Bastian completed his PhD in psychology in 2007 at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Professor Nick Haslam. He remained there as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow before accepting a University of Queensland (UQ) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in 2009, where he worked closely with Professor Jolanda Jetten. He currently holds an ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at UQ. Brock’s research has focused on a range of social issues including prejudice and dehumanisation between groups, with a particular interest in understanding religious conflict and the psychological underpinnings of righteous violence. His work has also applied these processes more broadly, focusing on the ways in which harmful interpersonal relations – including violent computer game interactions – affect self-perception. Brock also has an interest in moral issues surrounding human-animal relations and specifically the psychology of meat-eating behaviour. More recently he has begun to explore the role of societal norms in emotion regulation and dysfunction, and the potential benefits of experiencing common everyday physical pain. His research has a significant impact attracting over $600,000 in research funding. It has also been widely published within leading journals such as Psychological Science, and reviewed in global media outlets such as The Economist.
Stefanie Becker
Dr Stefanie Becker was born and raised in Germany, and received her PhD in 2007 from the University of Bielefeld, Germany, under the supervision of Professor Odmar Neumann, Professor Ulrich Ansorge and Dr Gernot Horstmann (summa cum laude). She then emigrated to Australia to work with Professor Roger Remington at the University of Queensland (UQ). After two years on a UQ Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stefanie received an Australian Research Council (ARC) Postdoctoral Fellowship, on which she is currently employed. Her work focuses on mechanisms of visual selective attention, specifically investigating how we select relevant information from a cluttered visual environment. Stefanie recently proposed a new theory of attention, which posits that attention is tuned to contextual features (e.g., redder, smaller, brighter) rather than absolute feature values. She currently tests this idea with a variety of different methods, including eye tracking, EEG and fMRI. Stefanie has published more than 25 papers in international, peer-reviewed journals, and received numerous grants, awards and prizes for her work. Amongst these are the prestigious German National Prize for the best dissertation in Experimental Psychology in Germany (2005-2007), the UQ Research Award, and the International EyeTrack Award for the best paper in 2010 using eye tracking.
Monique Robinson
Dr Monique Robinson completed her PhD and MPsych (Clinical) degrees at the University of Western Australia in 2010. Monique is currently an Australian Rotary Health Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research and a registered psychologist working in the field of perinatal, child and adolescent mental health. Monique’s primary research focus has been on the maternal lifestyle factors during pregnancy that influence behavioural development throughout childhood and adolescence. These include stress, maternal obesity, vitamin D levels, hypertension, alcohol intake and cigarette smoking. Monique has 26 publications in this area, including 19 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and government reports. She has received 19 early career researcher grants and awards to date, which include funding in 2011 from Qantas and the National Heart Foundation. In 2011 Monique was also awarded a Young Tall Poppy Science Award WA and the Heath Ledger Career Development Award. Monique is passionate about early intervention in mental health and is active in translation, including being a Scientific Advisor to the Commissioner for Children and Young People in Western Australia. She is a member of the organising committee for the 7th World Conference on the Promotion of Mental Health and the Prevention of Mental and Behavioural Disorders.
The Award recognises outstanding research in psychology by students who have recently completed a PhD at an Australian university.
Renita Almeida
University of Western Australia
Thesis title – An analysis of Embedded Figures Test performance in individuals with autistic-like traits
The thesis examined superior visual search capabilities demonstrated by individuals with autism. A reliable and repeatable new tool was created to investigate visual processing anomalies based on recent work on shape-coding mechanisms in human vision. The thesis was recognised through the award of several other prizes, including Best Student Presentation at both the Australian Society for Medical Research, and the Australasian Society for Experimental Psychology Conference.
Bronwyn Graham
University of New South Wales
Thesis title – Fibroblast Growth Factor-2: A novel enhancer of memory
The thesis examined the role of the neurotrophic factor fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF2) in the formation of emotional memories in rats. These studies demonstrated that FGF2 enhances fear extinction memories and promotes resistance to relapse, suggesting that FGF2 may be a novel pharmacological adjunct to exposure-based therapies for anxiety disorders. The research led to a Neurological Fellowship from the American Australian Association to undergo a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Paula Wye
University of Newcastle
Thesis title – Smoking in mental health hospitals: Policies, practices and perceptions
The thesis aimed to determine the policies and practices relating to smoking and nicotine dependence treatment in mental health hospitals. The research provided evidence of a practice gap in addressing smoking for those with mental illness. The doctoral research led to an NHMRC National Institute of Clinical Studies fellowship, co-funded by the Hospitals Contribution Fund of Australia Foundation, which increased the provision of nicotine dependence treatment to mental health clients.
The Distinguished Contribution to Psychological Science Award and the APS Early Career Teaching Award were not conferred in 2011.
The Prize recognises excellence in psychology and is awarded to each student who gains first place at the end of an accredited fourth year program in psychology in universities offering a program.
Clare Ryrie
Australian Catholic University
Thesis title – Future thinking as a strategy for prospective memory in young and older adults
Erin Walsh
Australian National University
Thesis title – The impact of rumination and worry on nightly sleep: A trait and state approach
Apsara Telwatte
Bond University
Thesis title – The adolescent depression scale: Predicting adolescent depression after vicarious exposure to natural disaster induced stressors
Dominica Kazan
Central Queensland University
Thesis title – Adult adjustment to coeliac disease: The role of coping and health locus of control
Susan Glencross
Charles Darwin University
Thesis title – Psychological factors influencing individuals’ propensity to seek mental health services
Yvette Eriksen
Charles Sturt University
Thesis title - Revisiting the 'Depressive Paradox': Investigating the relationship between characterological self-blame, negative attributional style and depressive symptoms
Lucy Wing-Yee Chan
Curtin University
Thesis title – A moral basis for recycling: Extending the theory of planned behaviour
Alexa Hayley
Deakin University
Thesis title – The effect of recalled behaviour and social proximity on helping intention: An experimental study of moral cleansing
Beron Tan Wei Zhong
Edith Cowan University
Thesis title – Physical activity: Its implications on attention span and quality of life in children with autism spectrum disorder
Nicola Guerin
Flinders University
Thesis title – Do witnesses recall to reject? The role of recollection in line-up decisions
Allana Canty
Griffith University
Thesis title – The validity and utility of a virtual reality prospective memory task for use with individuals with traumatic brain injury
Eliza Birtles
James Cook University
Thesis title – Organisational and individual factors contributing to job satisfaction, dissatisfaction and burnout for oncology and palliative care nurses
Claire Stewart
La Trobe University
Thesis title – The roles of mindfulness, meditation and empathy in predicting and promoting interpersonal forgiveness at a dispositional and state level
Julia Plumb
Macquarie University
Thesis title – The influence of histone deacetylase inhibition on the extinction and reinstatement of methamphetamine-induced conditioned place preference
Annalise Avitabile
Monash University
Thesis title – The effect of isoflurane and ketamine on blood-brain barrier permeability
Maroulia Katsipis
Murdoch University
Thesis title – Visual imagery and reading enjoyment: A situation model investigation
Brooke Poulsen
Queensland University of Technology
Thesis title – Mentalisation from an attachment perspective: Enduring and contextual felt-security
Vicky Bablas
RMIT University
Thesis title – Body checking behaviours, body checking cognitions and obsessive beliefs in Australian women
Marta Maspero
Southern Cross University
Thesis title – Stimulus equivalence and bilingualism
James Russo
Swinburne University
Thesis title – A phenomenological enquiry into the process, motives and outcomes of meditation practice
Laura Taplin
University of Adelaide
Thesis title – Organisational personality: Exploring organisational culture using a Big-Five personality model
Laura Uebergang
University of Ballarat
Thesis title – Pubertal timing, objectification theory and disordered eating
Sally Bradford
University of Canberra
Thesis title – Factors influencing young people’s choice of professional help for mental health concerns
Monika Raniti
University of Melbourne
Thesis title – Sleep restriction and sleep quality: Associations with depressive symptoms across adolescence
Katrina Grasby
University of New England
Thesis title – Does lesioning the anterior claustrum of rats result in behavioural impairments commonly expressed in schizophrenia?
Emily White
University of New South Wales
Thesis title – Animal models of aberrant salience in schizophrenia: A comparison of amphetamine and phencyclidine sensitisation
Alexandra Metse
University of Newcastle
Thesis title – Form deprivation of myopia and NOS expression in the guinea pig retina
Michael Thai
University of Queensland
Thesis title – When ethnic deviance is desired: The curious case of the perceptual foreigner
Rachel Samson
University of South Australia
Thesis title – Patterns in adolescent sleep, sleepiness and mood: Biological and psychosocial influences
Elizabeth Blight
University of Southern Queensland
Thesis title – A comparison of fathers and mothers on the factors associated with childhood feeding difficulties
Frances Butler
University of the Sunshine Coast
Thesis title – An investigation of stages of physical activity behaviour changes in mothers
Andrew Comensoli
University of Sydney
Thesis title – Personality in context: A multi-level investigation of the relationship between situational appraisals and momentary personality
Hollie Blackley
University of Tasmania
Thesis title – Spelling pseudowords: The effects of word characteristics and language exposure
Stephanie Wade
University of Western Australia
Thesis title – Effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) on action observation
Leanne Bugden
University of Western Sydney
Thesis title – The effect of musical harmonic expectations on performance in a structured arithmetic task: Shared or separable resources?
Lauren Turner
University of Wollongong
Thesis title – Approach, avoidance and fear: An investigation into a theoretical relationship between BIS/BAS/FFFS sensitivity and social functioning in adolescence
Borjan Milinkovic
Victoria University
Thesis title – Young Australian adults’ perceptions of and attitudes towards individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia: An interpretative phenomenological analysis