Research Experience Opportunities

2501: Babies’ Language Development

This research project investigates early language development in babies. Working on this project will involve: recruitment of participants, guided experiment design and implementation, running experiments, codification of the data obtained from experiments, guided result analysis. You will be fully trained in using the eye tracker, administering the experiment, and in the necessary data analysis techniques.

Student level: Open to undergraduate or MSc students 

Duration: at least 6 months 

Start date: TBC 

Responsible researcher: Dr Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez

BabyLab Website:  http://psych.brookes.ac.uk/babylab/

2502 Title: Young children’s social cognition and cognitive and metacognitive monitoring 

We have multiple on-going projects, which investigate preschool- and school-aged children’s understanding of people, learning, and teaching, and underlying mechanisms such as metacognitive monitoring and control. 

You will be working closely with Dr. Sunae Kim. The main tasks include family recruitment, testing children in schools or in the lab, and data entry. Appropriate training for all phases of these tasks will be provided. If you are interested in becoming more deeply involved in the projects, by conducting preliminary data analyses and contributing to manuscript drafts, a long-term commitment (at least one year) would be required. If your performance is satisfactory, you will be included as a co-author on a published paper. Many of Dr. Kim’s papers feature student (both undergraduate and graduate level) co-authors. 

Requirements: highly-motivated, detail-oriented, and reliable. No prior research experiences required. 

Student level: undergraduates or MSc students 

Duration: at least 6 months 

Start date: Negotiable 

Responsible researcher: Dr Sunae Kim 

2503: Creativity, imagination & fiction

This research project investigates imagination through (i) creativity -including an innovative new task- and (ii) functions of fiction. Working on this project will involve: recruitment of participants for an online survey, codification of the creativity data obtained from experiments, guided result analysis. You will be trained in creativity methodology, associated data analysis, and taught techniques to maximise participant recruitment. There is a potential to be involved in writing up the results too, if appropriate and desired, but which is optional otherwise.

Student level: Open to undergraduate or MSc students

Duration: at least 3 months

Start date: Negotiable

Responsible researcher: Dr Valerie van Mulukom

2504: Health Behaviour Change Intervention Development and Evaluation

In our research group, we are working on developing and evaluating interventions to improve health and wellbeing. Our current projects are focussed on interventions to support mid-life adults to reduce alcohol consumption. We are looking at the acceptability of a new intervention tailored to mid-life women in 'think aloud' interviews and exploring barriers and enablers to alcohol reduction with mid-life men in focus groups.

What's involved? Assisting with recruitment, data cleaning, data preparation, preparing dissemination materials for social media, planning dissemination events. 

Student level: Open to undergraduate or MSc students 

Requirements: No experience necessary, but must be willing to commit to tasks and work independently.

Duration: at least 6 months 

Start date: ASAP

Responsible researcher: Dr Emma Davies

Website: https://sites.google.com/brookes.ac.uk/spaces

2505: Psychology of Education projects

There are two opportunities relating to research around the use of GenAI in higher education. 1) Students are invited to turn the outputs from a recent qualitative research project on student perceptions of Gen-AI mediated feedback into an infographic/poster to inform and influence learning and teaching practice. 2) Students are invited to contribute to data analysis from a recent project to quantify and understand patterns of student use of Gen AI and psychological potential influences, alongside analysing some qualitative open-ended responses to a survey.  

Requirements: uses GenAI, works independently, takes initiative, and reliable 

Student level: Open to undergraduate or MSc students 

Duration: 6 months 

Start date: as soon as possible

Responsible researcher: Prof Louise Taylor

Website: https://www.brookes.ac.uk/research/units/hls/centres/real-he