The Department of Psychology offers a range of Undergraduate Research Opportunity (UROP) Modules each semester. You can find more information about requirements, etc at the following website: http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/undergrad/toknow/special_programmes/UROP.htm

A list of currently available psychology faculty projects is provided below. If you are interested to register for the module, please access our Department website for the instructions and registration form (Go to http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/psy/ -> Undergraduate Tab -> Other Resources -> Level 3000 -> PL3551 Application to undertake UROP module). The completed form has to be submitted by 5 August 2010 if you intend to read the module in AY2010-11, Semester 1. Please note that professors who have not advertised a project may still be willing to sponsor an UROP. If you would like to work with a specific professor who does not have a listed project, then please contact that professor directly to inquire whether an UROP is available.

Principal Investigator (PI) and team: George D Bishop
Topic of Research Project: Emotion regulation
Duration of the Research Project: 2 years
Description of the Research Project: This research examines the cardiovascular correlates of the expression and suppression of emotion. A series of four experiments is planned to address this question with a specific focus on anger. In these experiments participants will engage in a series of role plays with an experimental confederate with instructions to try to convince the confederate to change a behavior that is irritating. The participant will be instructed for each role play to either freely express their feelings, suppress their feelings or engage in cognitive restructuring in which they try to think about the situation in a more positive way. During the experiment both cardiovascular functions and psychological responses to the role plays will be measured.
Student’s role in this project: Students involved in this research will be involved in all parts of the research, including acting as the experimenter, serving as the confederate, analyzing data and writing up the findings. More than one student can participate in this project.
Indicate how many students you would like to recruit for the project. More than one student can participate in this project.

Principal Investigator (PI) and team: Melvin Yap
Topic of Research Project: Semantic effects in visual word recognition
Duration of the Research Project: One semester
Description of the Research Project: The main focus of this study is to investigate the role of semantics (i.e., meaning) on word recognition performance. Specifically, as a word becomes more difficult to recognize, does the lexical processing system become more sensitive to its meaning-level characteristics? Interestingly, there are a number of gaps and inconsistencies in the literature pertaining to this question, and the major goal of the present study is to shed more light on this issue.
Student’s role in this project: The student will be primarily involved in participant recruitment, data collection (i.e. running the experiment), and data analyses. He or she will be assigned regular readings, and is expected to turn in a lab report at the end of the UROP, describing the rationale for the study and any salient findings. The student will also be expected to attend and participate in weekly lab meetings.
Indicate how many students you would like to recruit for the project: One

Principal Investigator (PI) and team: Dr. So Wing Chee
Topic/title of Research Project:The role of gestures in memory recall
Duration of the Research Project: One year
Description of the Research Project: This project aims to investigate whether encoding and producing gestures would facilitate memory recall. In Study 1, the participants will be presented with three lists of words that are accompanied or not accompanied by gestures. They are then asked to recall as many words as possible. In Study 2, another group of participants are presented with the same set of words with gestures. They are asked to recall the words and produce those gestures at the same time. These two studies can offer insights into the cognitive processes when we memorize and recall words.
Description of the student’s role in the project: You will be participating in data collection and analyses. All the data will be collected at NUS. You will be expected to spend the first half of the semester to collect data and the rest of the time doing analyses.
Indicate how many students you would like to recruit for the project: I would like to recruit three students.

Principal Investigator (PI) and team: Chua Fook Kee
Topic of Research Project: Attention Capture in the Spatial and Temporal Domains
Duration of the Research Project: 1 YEAR
Description of the Research Project: This project is part of a wider project funded by the Science and Engineering Research Council. We are looking at the issue of attentional capture over time and space. We are interested in establishing (a) whether attention capture can be fully automatic, occurring without any volitional control by the observer, and (b) the circumstances under which it may be unconscious. The lab has gathered and published some preliminary data on these issues, and we are seeking to extend and refine this work. In the longer run, we will be extending this work to investigate the case where the visual display consists of video sequences.
Student’s role in this project: The student(s) will assist the PI in the implementation of a project that has been given in-principle approval by the Science and Engineering Research Council. The roles will include the following: (a) piloting the experiments; (b) data collection; and (c) preliminary data analysis. We are acquiring a state-of-the-art eyetracker, and the student(s) if they are willing, may be trained to use the eyetracker. (The team would include students from Electrical Engineering Department.)
Indicate how many students you would like to recruit for the project : 2 students

Principal Investigator (PI) and team: Dr Susan Rickard Liow
Topic of Research Project: Cognitive-Linguistic Screening of Kindergarten Children Duration of the Research Project: Semester 1 (could be extended)
Description of the Research Project: The project started in April 2010 and involves the development and administration of a battery of language (English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil), literacy, memory and reasoning tasks for 4-6 year old bilingual children attending six PCF kindergartens (Bishan and Boon Lay areas). The results will be of practical and theoretical interest. Basic descriptive statistics will provide reliable norms. These will enable help PCF teachers and parents to identify children at-risk of learning difficulties such as specific language impairments or developmental dyslexia. More detailed data analyses will enhance models of cognitive-linguistic processing in typically developing bilingual children whose languages differ in terms of orthography and/or phonology.
Student’s role in this project: (1 or 2 students) The student(s) could be involved in all stages of the project: Design of assessment tools (Tamil), administration of computerized vocabulary tests, reasoning, memory and spelling tasks, data entry and analyses, de-briefing for teachers and parents under supervision, literature search and reviews. Reading lists and training on SPSS will be provided and students will be expected to attend and contribute to weekly lab meetings with staff, honours and postgraduate students. Towards the end of the UROP semester, students will be asked to write a short APA-style report on an agreed aspect of the project, describing the rationale and the salient findings.

Principal Investigator (PI) and team: Dr Susan Rickard Liow
Topic of Research Project: Rehabilitation Programmes for Bilingual Adults with Dysphasia
Duration of the Research Project: Semester 1 & 2
Description of the Research Project: Rehabilitation services for elderly CVA (stroke) patients are very limited in Singapore. Cognitive neuropsychological models of communication problems following CVA have proved very effective for Evidence-Based Practice in English (Caramazza & Coltheart, 2006), particularly those targeting semantics. Equivalent theory-driven models for bilinguals are limited to European languages, such as French-English or Spanish-English, and translations are culturally inappropriate (Roberts, 1998). This one-year cross-faculty project is funded by VISA-NUS and involves collaboration between the Psycholinguistics Lab (AS4 04-05) in FASS and Neurologists from NUH. The aims are three-fold: (1) Psycholinguistic Models – to facilitate theory-driven assessment and rehabilitation for local adults by developing valid models of language processing in Malay, Chinese and local English, three languages that are well-contrasted for orthography, phonology and morphology; (2) NUHS Clinical Service – to support a new clinical service for dysphasic patients, many of whom are elderly Chinese-English or Malay-English bilinguals; (3) Case-Study Reports – to disseminate the results of effective rehabilitation programmes that target semantics and show evidence of cross-linguistic transfer in bilinguals.
Student’s role in this project: (1 or 2 students depending on language skills) The student(s) could be involved in all stages of the project: Design of and supervised administration of assessment tools, development of appropriate intervention materials, detailed single-case data analyses and report writing. Reading lists and training on SPSS will be provided and students will be expected to attend and contribute to weekly lab meetings with staff, honours and postgraduate students. Towards the end of the UROP semester, students will be asked to write a short APA-style report on an agreed case-study, describing the rationale for the intervention, and the outcome in two languages, if possible.

Principal Investigator (PI) and team: Maria Kozhevnikov
Topic of Research Project: Three-dimensional visual-processing in immersive virtual environments
Duration of the Research Project: from July 2010 to July 2012
Description of the Research Project: Recently, more realistic 3D displays have been designed as new, more ecologically valid alternatives to conventional 2D visual displays. However, research has thus far provided inconsistent evidence regarding their contribution to visual-spatial image encoding and transformation. The majority of experimental studies on 3D visual-spatial processing have been conducted using traditional 2D displays. Our research suggests that three-dimensionality and immersivity (being enclosed in the environment) is a critical feature of 3D virtual environments for facilitating visual processing. The research project will compare how people encode and transform visual images in 3D immersive virtual reality environments versus traditional 2d environments using behavioral and EEG measures.
Student’s role in this project: Students involved in this research will be involved in all parts of the research, including acting as the experimenter, recording the data in 3D virtual reality, analyzing data and writing up the findings He/she will be assigned regular readings, and is expected to turn in a lab report at the end of the UROP, describing the rationale for the study and research findings. More than one student can participate in this project.

Principal Investigator (PI) and team: Maria Kozhevnikov
Topic of Research Project: Object-spatial dissociation in visualization abilities
Duration of the Research Project: from July 2010 to July 2012
Description of the Research Project: Based on recent data from cognitive neuroscience and behavioral research about the existence of two object and spatial visual system, we propose a similar dissociation in individual differences in visualization. Specifically, we demonstrated that object visualization ability (processing visual information about appearances of objects and scenes in terms of their pictorial properties) is different from spatial visualization ability (processing visual information about spatial relations between objects or their parts, and performing mental spatial transformations and manipulations). We are interested in how these different types of visualization are used in different professional domains (e.g., science, visual arts, architecture). We demonstrated that object visualization ability relates to specialization in visual art, while spatial visualization ability relates to specialization in sciences. We would like to continue behavioral studies with members of different professions (visual artists, scientists, architects) to compare their imagery processes and visualization abilities.
Student’s role in this project: Students involved in this research will be involved in all parts of the research, including acting as the experimenter, recording the data, analyzing data and writing up the findings. He/she will be assigned regular readings, and is expected to turn in a lab report at the end of the UROP, describing the rationale for the study and research findings.

Principal Investigator (PI) and team: Dr K Griva
Topic of Research Project: Self management interveniton in ESRD
Duration of the Research Project: 3yrs
Description of the Research Project: The main focus of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of a self management program in improving patient outcomes for patients maintained on dialysis treatments. The intervention is based on psycholigical principles on behavioural changes and aims to facilitate change with regards to lifestyle components of treatment, namely renal diet, fluid regulation/control and medication intake so as to improve adherence and thereby reduce cardiovascular complications. Patients recruited are randomised into intervention and control conditions and are asked to complete questionnaire assessments at baseline, 1 month 3 month and 9 month after program.
Student’s role in this project: The student will be primarily involved in data collection (questionnaire, short interviews and medical information), and data entry. He or she will be working together with the full-time Research Assistant and part-time Research Assistants on the project and is expected to turn in a lab report at the end of the UROP on findings of data collected during the placement. The student will also be expected to attend and participate in weekly lab meetings with the KG and research team
Indicate how many students you would like to recruit for the project: Two