Research projects of the Faculty of Psychology
- Project "School of Tomorrow"
The distinctive qualities of good digital teaching aids have not yet been sufficiently analysed. In this project, a Web application for acquiring a second language is being developed according to scientifically sound learning principles. The benefit of the Web application will be scientifically reviewed over a period of several years.
- Project "Affective and cognitive functioning in relation to food intake"
This project aims at understanding the psychological mechanisms that are at stake in obesity
- Project "Reward mechanisms in obese patients"
Is food more rewarding for obese than for healthy-weight individuals?
- Project "Numerical Cognition"
Numbers are omnipresent in our society, and dealing with numbers (e.g. in a supermarket or at school) is a key cognitive competence that has a crucial impact on our socio-economic status and well-being. The aim of this project is to explore basic cognitive and neuronal aspects of numerical cognition.
- Project "The role of motives on emotional processing"
There is variance between persons regarding the incentives that activate our motivational system. The effect of individual differences in basic motives on attentional allocation to emotional stimuli remains controversial.
- Project "What makes a Screencast successful?"
Screencasts are useful eLearning-tools for distance learning. However, they are not always successful. Different aspects of screencast will be explored in this project, with a focus on cognitive and affective impacts on observers.
- Project "When is the use of tablets useful?"
Tablets and Smartphones are omnipresent in our society, and more and more schools have started to use tablets in classrooms. Considering perceptual and cognitive factors, it remains unclear for which tasks the user can really profit from the use of tablets.
- Project "Using virtual reality to learn about inaccessible micro- and macrocosmic structures in primary school"
This project aims to identify the opportunities and challenges when it comes to developing, implementing and evaluating an immersive virtual reality (VR) tool for science teaching in primary schools.
- Project "Behavioral patterns of the wandering mind"
During everyday tasks people’s attention is not always directed to the task at hand. Sometimes we get distracted or simply engage with inner thoughts, which is often referred to as mind wandering or daydreaming. Here we want to study differences in behavioral and psychophysiological measures between task-engaged and task-disengaged behavior.
- Project "Drawing as an encoding tool to enhance episodic memory of elderly people"
In the current project we investigate whether drawing can be used as encoding tool to enhance episodic memory performance of elderly people.
- Project "Preschool children’s learning from 3D virtual reality: Investigating the educational impact of the 21st century fairy tales"
Young children show a keen interest in fictional stories, and, simultaneously a tendency to quarantine information from fictional stories. Digitalization of educational materials cannot be avoided, but there is a lack of empirical evidence on how it affects learning and memory in children. We are interested in the use of new media and in their potential impact in promoting learning.
- Project "Using virtual reality to investigate access, fidelity, and vividness of visual mental representations"
When recalling an object that you have previously seen how do the different features location, orientation, and color integrate in memory? To understand the relations between individual features of visual mental representations it is essential to extend the existing research to a 3D virtual reality approach, which allows to represent space in a more natural way than 2D computer-based experiments.
- Project "How do families of children with special needs cope with the COVID-19 pandemic?"
- Project "Virtual reality game: my first day at school"
- Project "Socio-emotional processes in individuals with a developmental disorder (SOEMO)"
- Project "Board games involving emotional skills: promoting positive emotions and emotion regulation skills in adolescents"
- Project "Interactions between memory systems in typical development and in neurodevelopmental disorders"
Parallel learning and memory systems supported by different neurobiological substrates contribute different representations of the world. This project aims to describe the emergence, development, and function of these different parallel memory systems in children and adults with a typical development, and in individuals with Down syndrome (Trisomy 21 or T21) or Williams syndrome (WS).
- Project "Links between brain activity (EEG) and cognitive capacities"
In this project, we are first exploring the relations between brain activity, using EEG recordings, and memory in typically developing children, young and healthy aging older adults. Second, we are characterizing the EEG microstates that are present in individuals with Down syndrome (Trisomy 21 or T21) or Williams syndrome (WS).
- Project "The impact of intermodal training on the cognitive capacities of individuals with handicaps"
Numerous studies have tried to determine whether “cognitive” training leads to improvements in cognitive performance. This project aims to determine whether an intermodal and intensive training improves the cognitive capacities of individuals with cognitive handicaps.
- Project "Profiles of spatial abilities in Down and Williams syndromes"
Down syndrome (Trisomy 21 or T21) and Williams syndrome (WS) are genetic disorders characterized by mental retardation and impaired abilities to process visuospatial information. Nevertheless, the ability of individuals with Down syndrome or Williams syndrome to navigate in the real word have not been well studied. The goal of this study is to characterize this capacity in these individuals.
- Project "EATMINT"
How to improve emotional awareness, emotion sharing with peers and emotion regulation in computer-mediated collaboration?
- Project "EMOVIZ"
How to support self-regulation and engagement in distance learning?
Completed projects
- Project "Distance learning: Individual differences & distributed vs. massed learning"
It is well known that humans learn more effectively when the material is spread out over a period of time in different learning sessions (i.e. distributed learning) than when they learn the material in one long session (i.e. massed learning). Here we want to replicate and extend this finding to a mixed mode approach in a distance learning setting based on new technologies.
- Project "Learning through teaching: Educational applications of virtual reality"
Explaining information to someone else in learning situations can help with learning new material (learning through teaching method). Here, we want to link the use of virtual reality (VR) with the learning through teaching method.
- Project "Interaction of learning principles in acquiring a new second language"
This project investigates the optimum configuration of factors for learning a second language efficiently.
- Project "Cognitive performance in the presence of a smartphone"
This project examines the influence the presence of a person’s own smartphone has on cognitive performance.
