News

This week we are (virtually) at the BNA Festival of Neuroscience, the Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) April meeting and the Society for Affective Science (SAS) Conference. Find out more at ….

Connor Keating’s talk “It’s all in the mind: elucidating two interacting contributors to emotion recognition accuracy” @SAS 15th April

Lydia Hickman’s poster “Examining movement differences in autism spectrum disorder and Parkinson’s disease” (BNA, poster no. PP001093; EPS no. 27)

Alicia Rybicki’s EPS talk “Dopaminergic modulation of learning from social and individual sources” 13:45 15th April (here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84442761973)

Sophie Sowden’s EPS poster “Effects of dopamine D2 receptor antagonist Haloperidol on movement speed in a drawing task” (no. 28)

Bianca Schuster’s poster “Effects of the dopamine D2 receptor antagonist Haloperidol on mentalizing performance in healthy adults” (BNA no. TP001214)

Thanks so much to our wonderful panel speakers, our chairperson Matt Bond, and everyone who joined us for our online event “Let’s talk about autism: Diversity and inclusion”. Check out this 1-hour-long highlights videos if you missed it

On Weds 31^st March (6-8:30pm BST) join the U21 Autism Research Network @AutismU21 for their panel event “Let’s talk about autism: diversity and inclusion”. Sign up here: https://tinyurl.com/yxjm7zs6

Well done to Sophie, Bianca, Dagmar and Connor on their new paper! In a series of four (!) experiments they dissociate spatial and kinematic cues in the recognition of emotion from facial expressions, and demonstrate that speeding-up facial expressions promotes anger and happiness judgements whilst slowing-down expressions encourages sadness judgements. Thanks to Sophie for driving this project!

Sowden, S. L., Schuster, B. A., Fraser, D.S., Keating, C., & Cook, J. L. (in press). The role of movement kinematics in facial emotion expression production and recognition. Emotion. — data & stimuli — pdf

Congratulations to Lydia on the acceptance of her new meta-analysis on the relationship between Heartbeat Counting and Heartbeat Discrimination! The paper will be published in Biological Psychology soon but you can view the author version here: https://jencooklab.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/hickman-et-al_biologicalpsychology_accepted.pdf

Hickman, L., Seyedsalehi, A., Cook, J.L, Bird, G., Murphy, J. (in press). The relationship between Heartbeat Counting and Heartbeat Discrimination: a meta-analysis. Biological Psychology. pdf

Congratulations to Sophie, Lydia, Connor and Bianca who have been awarded a U21 Researcher Resilience grant. This grant will fund work to bring together researchers and autistic individuals from around the world to form the U21 Autism Research Network. The Network will discuss issues around diversity and inclusion in autism research. Looking forward to seeing what happens with this exciting project!

Well done to Connor for writing a neat, jargon-free, summary of his recent review paper and making a video to explain his findings

Read our summary, published in The Conversation, here: https://theconversation.com/research-on-facial-expressions-challenges-the-way-we-think-about-autism-134053

Keating, C. T., & Cook, J. L., (2020). Facial Expression Production and Recognition in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Shifting Landscape. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America. Epub ahead of print. pdf

Congratulations to Lydia on the publication of her first article ‘The importance of assessing alexithymia in psychological research’ out now in PsyPAG Quarterly:

http://www.psypag.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/PsyPag-111-WEB.pdf (page 29)

MRC-funded PhD on social cognition, body movement & interoception in autism and Parkinson’s Disease. Deadline is midday Friday 15 February 2019. Find out more here:

https://more.bham.ac.uk/mrc-impact/phd-opportunities/ …

https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/exploring-the-causes-and-consequences-of-deficits-in-social-cognition-within-clinical-populations-a-study-of-motor-function-and-interoception/?p106140 …