A recent research project titled “Attentional Focus on What’s Motivationally Relevant Aids Performance at High Exercise Intensities” accomplished by Senior Lecturer Dr. Lim Wee Hun Stephen and student researcher Mr. Loh Kep Kee won, among all international research entries, the prestigious Best Research Paper Award at the Annual International Conference on Cognitive and Behavioral Psychology (CBP 2012) held on 13 and 14 February in Singapore this year.

This work first begun as part of Mr. Loh’s honours-level research in the Department of Psychology at the National University of Singapore under Dr. Lim’s supervision. Following his graduation, Mr. Loh currently pursues a Masters degree in Cognitive Neuroscience at University College of London.

Dr. Lim comments on this winning work: “People are increasingly becoming interested in leading healthy lifestyles. Marathons, for instance, have become a tourist attraction, and we hear of many who would travel across continents yearly just to participate in a variety of runs. This work started with an ambition to enhance exercising behaviors among non-elite sportsmen in ways unknown before. We are very proud to be the first research team in the world to discover a novel dimension underlying sports cognition which, when applied, can boost exercising behaviors across general populations. We are excited to have set new directions and standards for future research examining behavioral cognition.”

Conference Program Chair Dr. Miles Whittington described Dr. Lim’s work as “having extremely important implications for the scientific community”. This is not the first time that Dr. Lim and his research team had gained international recognition for their outstanding achievements. Last year, Dr. Lim and his students won the coveted Best Student Paper Award at EuroCogSci2011. Moving forward, Dr. Lim intends to continue training student researchers, some of whom he hopes will become stake-holders of scientific research in the long run.