School of Psychology and Counselling students

Understanding the Lived Experience of Social Workers from Diverse Cultural Backgrounds Working with Traumatised Clients:
An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

The research aims to explore the lived experience of vicarious trauma and vicarious posttraumatic growth in social workers from multiple cultural backgrounds in Australia. This study will employ a qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) design, with two data collection points (T1 & T2) over nine to twelve months. A qualitative methodology, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), will be used to explore and provide detailed examinations of how the research participants from diverse cultural backgrounds make sense of their personal lived experiences of vicarious trauma and vicarious posttraumatic growth. The findings of this research can be used to inform programs and policies to support the wellbeing of multicultural social workers.

Principal supervisor:  Professor Jane Shakespeare-Finch

Associate supervisor:  Dr Michelle Newcomb

External supervisor:  Adjunct Professor Renata Meuter

Understanding Self-Image and Compassionate Interpersonal Goal Adoption and Pursuit in Social Media Contexts

Interpersonal goals can shape behaviours and experiences on Social Networking Sites (SNSs). Compassionate interpersonal goals, focused on supporting others, and self-image interpersonal goals, aimed at conveying a desirable image, can lead to distinct SNS behaviours and well-being-related outcomes. This research investigates the factors influencing the adoption and pursuit of these goals within SNS contexts. Using an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design, four studies—starting with qualitative analysis and progressing to cross-sectional and experimental methods—identify key variables contributing to these goals. Findings are anticipated to enhance understanding of psychological processes underlying SNS behaviours, offering insights to promote healthier SNS use.

Principal supervisor: Dr Stephanie Tobin

Associate supervisor: A/Prof Trish Obst

Fear conditioning: The role of stimulus valence in return of fear

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorder. Exposure therapy is well-supported as an effective treatment, however, return of fear is common. Fear is acquired through Pavlovian classical conditioning and exposure therapy is based on the understanding of an inhibitory learning model. According to this model the initial learned conditioned stimulus (CS)/ unconditional stimulus (US) association is maintained in extinction, while a second inhibitory association is developed. This research aims to investigate the effect of post-extinction CS valence on return of fear. Therefore, it will further the understanding of the relationship between evaluative and fear conditioning.

Principal supervisor:  Professor Ottmar Lipp

Associate supervisor:  Dr Luke Ney

Functional imagery training to build motivation for self-guided therapy for young people

Self-guided digital health interventions (DHIs) have the potential to deliver meaningful improvements for young Australians who often face higher rates of mental illness and barriers to traditional therapy compared with the general population. An individual's motivational state has been identified as a risk-factor in experimental studies and a common theme among participants who fail to engage with DHIs. Functional imagery training (FIT) is a promising new intervention that combines the client-centred counselling of motivational interviewing (MI) with multisensory imagery training to support motivation. My research investigates the utility of self-guided FIT as a motivational intervention for increasing young people's adherence to DHIs.

Principal supervisor:  Associate Professor Melanie White

Associate supervisor:  Dr Jennifer Connolly

Acute Post-Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) Social Cognition and Interoceptive Awareness: A Normative Comparison and Prognostic Evaluation for the Later Experience of Persistent Post-Concussion Symptoms (PPCS) Using a Prospective Cohort Study and Delphi Method

Persistent post-concussion symptoms are commonly encountered in clinical practice among patients following a mild-traumatic brain injury. Currently there is no established way of predicting which individuals are most at risk of developing persistent post-concussion symptoms after sustaining a mild-traumatic brain injury. Impaired interoceptive awareness and social cognition in the early phase following a mild-traumatic brain injury have been under-explored as predictors of functional recovery following mild-traumatic brain injury. Consequently, this research project will specifically examine the relationship between recovery trajectories and i) interoceptive awareness impairments and ii) social cognitive impairments among individuals with a diagnosis of mild-traumatic brain injury.

Principal supervisor:  Professor Karen Sullivan

Associate supervisor:  Dr Sherrie-Anne Kaye

External supervisor:  Associate Professor Liisa Laakso (Mater Research)

Emotion processing: Examining internal contextual influences on human facial expression recognition

Facial expressions play a vital role in interpersonal relationships and social interactions by conveying information on specific emotions. Emotional contexts across human facial expression recognition studies have considered an array of internal and external contextual variables. Typically, facial expressions are recognised faster and more accurately when contextual information is congruent with the emotion depicted in the expression in line with the perceiver's individual affective state (or mood). This research proposes to establish a mood induction procedure to investigate the influence of affective states on emotion perception. The project aims to address some of the inconsistencies presented in the literature and determine the mechanisms that mediate the influence of contextual information on facial expression recognition.

Principal supervisor:  Professor Ottmar Lipp

Associate supervisor:  Dr Stephanie Tobin

External supervisor:  Belinda Craig (Bond University (Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine)

Exclusionary school discipline and justice system involvement: Identifying opportunities to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline

This project uses linked administrative records from education, justice, health, and community services to characterise the use of exclusionary school discipline practices within a large NSW population cohort, and to examine the relationship of disciplinary exclusion with different forms of justice system involvement. The project expects to deliver new information to inform policy makers, educators, criminologists, and psychologists regarding opportunities to avert the adverse outcomes of exclusionary discipline practices in Australian schools.

Principal supervisor:  Professor Kristin Laurens

Associate supervisor:  Professor Linda Graham

External supervisor:  Professor Melissa Green (University of NSW)

External supervisor:  Professor Kimberlie Dean (University of NSW)

Exploring different paradigms to strengthen extinction in human differential fear learning

Human differential fear conditioning is utilized to model and understand the mechanisms involved in exposure-based treatments for fear and anxiety disorders. During acquisition, participants are presented with two conditional stimuli (CSs), one (CS+) paired with an aversive unconditional stimulus (US) and a second (CS-) presented alone. Extinction, the repeated presentation of the CSs without the US, is the standard paradigm to reduce conditional responding that has been acquired following the repeated pairing of CS and US in acquisition. However, this reduction of conditional responding is prone to relapse. Gradual extinction, the fading out of CS-US pairings during extinction, has been shown to reduce the return of fear in rodents, but evidence from human research is mixed. The current study will investigate the effect the gradual extinction procedure in human fear conditioning, assess whether it reduces the return of fear, and what factors would contribute to the effectiveness or ineffectiveness in reducing the return of fear.

Principal supervisor:  Professor Ottmar Lipp

Associate supervisor:  Dr Luke Ney