NUS Psychology Lab Tour 2011 “Authorized Personnel Only” aims to provide psychology students, with a behind-the-scene peek, of the experiences of working in the lab. This year, selected students have been granted access into 2 psychology labs. In the Psycholinguistic lab, students were introduced to sophisticated recording instruments, the analysis of the sound waves and the coding of speech information, just to name a few. Similarly, in the Brain and Behavior lab, students were allowed to examine the working of an EEG machine up close and personal, where they learnt the process by which brainwaves were generated, recorded and analyzed.
Most participants found the tour enriching and insightful, commenting that the takeaways from the tour complemented the main academic regime. It was also encouraging to hear that many Year Ones grew to regard experiment/research participation more responsibly after understanding the behind-the-scene effort of the researchers. Senior students found the tour a great way to understand the demands of a research project and the selected psychology discipline, before they embark on their ISMs/IRPs/honors thesis and commit themselves to a particular field. The spontaneous Q&A session and personal exchanges that took place between the students and the Research Assistants available during the tour were also found to be especially helpful. Overall, the tour was touted as a great exploratory platform, be it for the Year Ones who are still too inexperienced to be RAs or the seniors who still have reservations about helming their own research projects.
All credit goes to Dr Susan Rickard Liow and Dr Melvin Yap of the Psycholinguistic lab, Dr Trevor Penney and Dr Annett Schirmer from the Brain and Behavior lab, as well as all the Research Assistants (Angela, Cynthia, Daphne, Ling) and all the other people who took time out to conduct the tour. Without whom, none of this would have been possible.
The writer is the Assistant Honorary General Secretary of NUS Psychology Society. NUS Psychology Lab Tour 2011 is another initiative brought to you by NUS Psychology Society.
