Sinéad

The Psychology Society of Ireland doesn’t appear to update their website very much (also, another fine example of antiquated web design!) therefore I cannot access information on all of the awards from the Psychology Congress. But, I did want to mention the work by Colin Gallagher, a final year student from IADT (Psychology Applied to I.T) who received a well deserved commendation for his research presentation. Not only is his research fascinating and his presentation enjoyable, he was more than capable of handling the multitude of questions the adjudicators and audience threw at him. An award well deserved. Below is his abstract, taken from “The Irish Psychologist” Vol. 34, no.9 – I’ve also added some relevant web-links.

The Effects of Music on Personal Space Preferences: Comparing Introverts and Extraverts

The current study examined the distracting effects of music on introverts and extraverts with regard to their personal space preferences in public spaces. There has been no prior investigation into the possible link between personal space and music. The now pervasive behaviour of listening to music in public is possibly a reaction to the modern hi-density urban situations that people live in nowadays and music could be a way of easing people’s feelings of crowding. Participants in this study performed a simple personal space measure with music and without, and then completed a personality test (NEO PI-R). The research result found there was a significant reduction in personal space boundaries of the particpants when listening to music. This supports Worchel and Teddlie’s theory that distractions reduce personal space. The introvert sample were found to be most affected indicating that introverts find music more distracting, as was found by Furnham and Bradley.

I’m certain that anyone that uses public transport, especially the Luas or Dart, will agree with these results. I for one, feel a lot more uncomfortable without my earphones in. Though, if I myself had been conducting this study, I would have included a third condition – earplugs. I would be curious about the results of this, and whether any significant reduction in personal space boundaries would be at all comparable to the “with music” condition.

I’ve only just caught up with everyone else online and have upgraded to the newest version of WordPress. In the upgrade I lost all of my tags and all of the customisation of my theme. Unfortunately, I’ll be stuck with the current blog design (which I’m not happy with at all) until I have more free time – currently trying to finish up a consumer psychology essay and write my thesis research proposal for the purposes of gaining ethical approval from the college.

As soon as college is wrapped up I think I might just build my own theme from the bottom up – it’s been a long time since I’ve had any web or graphic design projects, so it’ll be a nice challenge. If anyone has any experience in designing their own WordPress theme I would love to hear from you, or if anyone can steal Sabrina Dent‘s beautiful theme for me, that would be even better!

I returned late last night from the Psychology Student Congress held in Mary Immaculate College in Limerick and I must say – I really enjoyed myself. I found Limerick to be a vibrant, clean and enjoyable city. I tried to see as many IT related presentations as I could and the highlight for me was from Michael Malone, an undergraduate Psychology Applied to IT student from IADT. Below is his abstract, taken from “The Irish Psychologist” Vol. 34, no.9 – I’ve also added some relevant web-links.

The Physiological Correlates of “Flow” States Within an IT Environment

Since the initial conception of the “Flow” construct a vast amount of psychological research has focused on identifying its key subjective components and investigating its supposed association with elevating human performance capacity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). However, the most distinguishable characteristic of this research is its complete dependency on qualitative research methods. There has been no research conducted thus far investigating the molecular concomitants of flow states. For this study 8 participants (6 males, 2 females) were requested to play a videogame (Flow TM) which was specifically designed to induce flow states (Chen, 2006). Heart rate and electro-dermal activity (EDA) were recorded during game play. An adapted FSS-2 (Flow State Scale Revised) questionnaire was then administered to measure flow levels experienced during gameplay. It is anticipated that the molecular activity associated with increased Flow levels will resemble that of deep meditation (i.e, decreases in both heart rate and skin conductance) due to their similarly described subjective state (Marr, 2001). Analysis of results is pending. Results will be discussed with reference to the methodological challenges facing future flow research and possible benefits derived from such research.

Consider the feelings you get when you’re “in the zone” and completely immersed in your computer, even forgetting to eat and being completely unaware of the passage of time (I can certainly relate!). The above piece of research hypothesized that this was similar to a meditative state. The actual results of the study did not support this hypothesis (though decreased heart rates were found) but I believe that this was due to the small scale of the study – due to time constraints, as it was only a undergraduate piece of research. If participants had been tested more than once, I believe that it would have led to a more relaxed state as they would have had no anxiety related to the equipment being used to monitor their physiological responses, and of course, would have had some experience playing the game.

I sincerely hope that someone in either IADT or another college can fund this as a long term postgraduate research study.

Coincidentally the British Psychological Society held their annual conference in Dublin this week and Jazz Biscuit has pointed out all the “tabloid fodder” studies that were discussed.

Not only are music fans beginning to prefer Wikipedia over Myspace for finding out information about musicians, other fans are using the Myspace forums and blogs to post links to their illegally uploaded mp3s. There are numerous threads within the music forums on Myspace that contain active and unbroken links to full album downloads.

This is rather interesting, especially considering that just recently Universal Music, Sony-BMG and Warner Music signed a deal with Myspace to create “Myspace Music” where fans can listen to free streaming music (of their choice, of course), whilst being bombarded with advertisements. All this, in an attempt to retrieve revenue lost, from… illegal mp3 file sharing.

I found these forums searching for information on the upcoming Breeders album, Mountain Battles, set for release on the 7th of April, only to find a leaked copy fully available to download.

The question is – was the temptation to download it too much? Or did I simply click the “report abuse” button and quickly move on.

What do you think?

I just spotted this rather interesting advertisement on Facebook. I wonder if my own face will be appearing along side the products and services that I am a fan of. I wonder what Tim thinks of his endorsement.

Tim is in my network of friends, so I assume this is why this ad has been targeted towards me. I must admit, it got my attention pretty quick and I’m very impressed. It is neither intrusive nor annoying because I actually care what my friends online might be a fan of, though, for those on FB with 100′s of friends they don’t actually know, this might be a tad annoying, especially if they are incompatible taste wise. Not like Timmy and I!

It’s a pity the ad wasn’t targeted enough to know that I’m already a fan of Phantom.

Loving the B3TA Star Trek image challenge. These are the ones that have made me laugh my ass off – USB Data, Cyberspace the final frontier, Star Trek the Blome Generation and 2 Girls 1 Cup. Hating that the site’s questionable content (the “occasional” badly drawn cock) means that I can’t access it from work.

Loving the work of Maria Schneider (staff writer at the Onion), her web-comic strips over at Pathetic Geek Stories are inspired by user submitted geeky childhood/teen confessionals that she illustrates, quite brilliantly. Setting up a dialogue with the individuals who submit their stories enables her to bring extra realism to each comic, thus making them hard not to identify with. Hating that I’m terrified to submit my own, as I do have some terribly embarrassing (thus humorous!) stories locked deep inside.

Loving Play.com, especially their fast delivery. Admittedly this site could use some work, especially in regards to the structure of it’s categorisation system, I actually use Amazon to browse but Play to purchase. The reason for this is because Play offer such good value for money and complete transparency, meaning that you known exactly how much you’re going to pay for an item before you’ve even added it to your shopping basket (as postage is included in each item price, rather than added on at the end). Being able to view the site in Euro is also a huge benefit, I hate trying to shop online and converting currency as I go along, it’s too messy. Hating Playtrade, half of the items I have tried to purchase from these “Playtraders” have turned out as being out of stock because they don’t update their inventories often enough.

Loving that the IFI is finally showing Grindhouse – the Planet Terror and Death Proof double-feature, including all the fake and fantastic movie trailers in the middle. Hating that it’s a Saturday and Sunday matinée showing only. Walking out into the light of day after these will not be pleasant.

In two weeks time I’m off to Limerick to attend the Congress of Psychology Students – this is an annual event where undergraduate and postgraduate psychology students (and sometimes their supervisors) present the research that they have conducted, usually in the last year or two. At this event two years ago I presented my own research, and plan on doing so once again at next year’s congress.

The congress is a wonderful opportunity to gather information about the current direction of Irish psychological research and based on the information from the timetable for presentations it appears that the majority of the research to be presented is coming from the traditional mainstream topics of scientific psychology. From almost 200 presentations taking place only about 10 of these are related to I.T in some way, which personally is a big disappointment, especially considering the ubiquity of communications technologies in Ireland and the number of I.T companies based here.

Applying psychological studies to technology has always been a niche in this country, which is surprising because it has so many positive and negative impacts upon Irish working life, home life, education etc. It is something that I feel passionately about, especially the importance of applying scientific methods to research in I.T – rather than the current climate of unreliable surveys and the media shaping public knowledge and ideas about how we use and interact with one another through technology.

I did however note an increase in the areas of research related to gay men and lesbians (though it is still a tiny percentage of the 200 presentations). There are of course many other areas of research that I have an interest in and below is a list of the selected presentations which I will aiming to attend.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Irish Times reports today that €252 million euro will be available to schools in Ireland over the next 5 years for computer equipment (link). The National Centre for Technology in Education claims that this is an inadequate fund and it will not be enough to bring schools towards the EU average level. A draft copy of a report questioning this €252 million euro ICT fund makes a number of recommendations that in my opinion are completely disingenuous. Peter Mac Menamin the general secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland points out that thousands of teachers had gone to the trouble of getting ICT training but that the lack of commitment to ICT means that…

“It is like learning to drive – and then sitting into a car with no wheels.”

Essentially the argument is that the lack of high-speed internet connections and modern computer equipment has stopped these thousands of teachers being capable of correctly teaching this subject.

However, even if half the computers in Irish schools are over 4 years old (the Irish Times article points out), this could not possibly stop someone from teaching basic practical computer skills. You also do not need a high-speed Internet connection to teach ICT, yes it would be preferable, but there are plenty of music teachers and language teachers in Irish schools that would greatly benefit from having modern audio equipment, but are more than capable of continuing to teach their classes with the equipment provided to them (i.e. a piano or a tape recorder).

“The Republic has one of the lowest rates of ICT usage in education in the developed world”

Does the report point out the fact that the ICT training provided to teachers is possibly inadequate? That ICT is still not a Junior or Leaving Certificate subject? (Interestingly enough, Greek, Hebrew and Classical Studies continue to be). As ICT is not a subject at either Junior or Leaving Cert. examination level, there is no need to be qualified in the field. If you want to teach English, Irish, French, Maths etc., you must first have your primary degree in these topics and this is not the case with ICT. Yet, it is a topic that is difficult to teach and requires plenty of experience. Otherwise you end up teaching a class of students irrelevant information, rather than the practical ICT skills needed in a modern workplace. Yes, there is the Junior Certificate cycle subject “Technology” but this seems to be a mixed bag of technical drawing and some kind of model making and electronics.

Why can’t part of this €252 million euro be used to provide schools with 1 full-time ICT teacher? Why not allow I.T graduates to get their Higher Diploma in Education and then employee them full-time. They would also be able to provide much needed technical support and ICT consultation, ultimately saving schools money as they would no longer have to pay unnecessary fees to outside firms when a computer crashes or a piece of software needed updating. I.T graduates could also save schools money by implementing the open source software initiative.

I would argue that it is not like sitting in a car with no wheels. It is more like taking a short course in French, and then being asked to teach it to a mixed class of students who already speak it fluently, and those who only know how to say…

“Il est sur ma page de Bebo.”

Take, for example, my own experience with ICT in secondary school. Yes, we were lucky enough to be provided with two computer rooms with rows upon rows of computers, an adequate Internet connection (that sometimes worked) and a couple of the math and science teachers were sent on ICT skills training. The actual ICT classes we received taught some basic typing skills, using Microsoft Word to create an assortment of projects, the ins and outs of computer hardware and how to use “skoool.ie”. Not exactly the most practical set of skills.

However, as lucky as we were, the teachers that had been sent on these ICT courses were usually too busy with their main classes to actually teach us and we’d be left in a room full of computers with nothing but mischief to get up to. Even when a teacher was present, they were completely unaware of the fact that I had taught the class not only how to write and reply to the boys from the local boy’s secondary school, but also how to make sure the teachers didn’t find out about it.

According to my younger brother, still in secondary school, not much has changed since I’ve left school. Just like me before him, he gains nothing from these ICT classes and has instead channeled his boredom into finding plenty of non-Bebo methods of sending “innocent” messages across the Internet to other secondary school classes, albeit classes full of teenage girls.