Psychology

Combat apathy in traumatic brain injury patients (Old ID 27911)
Liza van Eijk - Psychology
01 Feb 2023 - 31 Dec 2026
Clinicians often mention apathy as the cause for decreased treatment progression for Traumatic Brain Injury patients. TBI patients with apathy symptoms are less motivated to engage continuously in their therapy schedule. Constant monitoring of patient engagement can help clinicians better measure patient progress and personalise the treatment accordingly. However, current clinical measurements of apathy cannot provide clinicians with continuous feedback. This project offers a novel continuous comprehensive measure of apathy feedback to assist clinicians with assessing and improving patient recovery. This apathy measure will combine traditional clinical measures of apathy with neurophysiological data collected from a virtual reality exoskeleton device.
Examining playing performance in Rugby Union via static and dynamic approaches (Old ID 26769)
Jonathan Connor - Psychology
01 Mar 2020 - 31 Dec 2022
Innovative technology within elite sport has provided high performance staff with an abundance of player and team performance metrics – ‘big rugby data’. Despite the availability of this information, the crucial keys to match success in rugby union remain unknown, possibly due to the complexity of match play. This project will evaluate the complexity of elite rugby union matches by examining teams’ performance via novel sport analytics considering static and dynamic approaches. Outcomes will identify the keys to success from a micro to macro level and assist coaching staff to optimise strategies for enhanced success within rugby union.
North Queensland Regional Creativity and Innovation: Industry Partnership-Building and Action Research Events (Old ID 23053)
Connar McShane - Psychology
01 Aug 2016 - 31 Dec 2017
The North Queensland Regional Creativity and Innovation research cluster proposes a series of events that will serve the dual purpose of engaging in industry and community partnership-building as well as allowing researchers to engage in the crowd sourcing of ideas and information. Removing the Boundaries events will entail video-recorded structured conversations, and also provide participants with the opportunity to subsequently upload images and texts to the projects web portal. We regard these events as Phase 1 of the project where we secure ongoing knowledge-transfer partnerships, establish a template for community processes of co-creation, and generate a 2017 LP application.
Diagnostic Approaches to Mental Health - The Allostatic Load (Old ID 27306)
Zoltan Sarnyai - Psychology
12 Jul 2021 - 31 Aug 2025
The goal of this project is to establish allostatic load index as a predictive tool in psychiatry. I will study the role allostatic load index, a measure of multisystem adaptation to changing demands and stress/trauma, in predicting the development of serious mental illness by analysing a UK longitudinal data set.
Seed funding -improving stroke management by characterising the ischaemic penumrba proteome.
Liza van Eijk - Psychology
01 Jul 2024 - 30 Jun 2025
Current therapies for stroke work by restoring the blood supply to the brain to rescue oxygen-starved tissue at risk of dying (known as the ischaemic penumbra). Consumer groups highlight that therapies to slow the death of cells in the penumbra is a priority, however, surprisingly little is known about the biology of this tissue. This study will utilise laboratory models of stroke, and apply modern imaging, proteomic and bioinformatic approaches to characterise the major pathways driving penumbra phenotype. Generated data will provide a world's first perspective into penumbra biology as an important foundation for subsequent grants seeking to test potential therapuetic targets.
Qualitative Methods for Analyzing Mechanisms of Change in Process-Based Therapy
Klaire Somoray - Psychology
01 Aug 2024 - 31 Dec 2024
In this project we will conduct a scoping review to identify the available, most widely used and most useful human and AI methods for analysing therapeutic change in therapy sessions. The findings of the scoping review will inform subsequent empirical research studies.
A smartphone-based decision tool to stimulate cyclone mitigation. (Old ID 22537)
Connar McShane - Psychology
30 Mar 2016 - 29 Mar 2019
Issues surrounding losses to the community from cyclone damage and associated premium affordability in Queensland have been highlighted with the advent of the Northern Australia Insurance Premiums Taskforce, a Productivity Commission review and a number of Australian Government Actuary reports. Their findings based on consultation with communities, governments and industry show benefits to be achieved from mitigation (e.g., to improve structural aspects of buildings to reduce damage from future severe wind events). The goal of this project is to develop and actionable, research-based approach to mitigation in Queensland and other wind-prone regions of Australia. However, engineering solutions to vulnerability are only effective if widely implemented, requiring an appreciation of factors that homeowners reflect on when considering mitigation. Therefore, this project will also identify drivers of homeowner engagement. Coupling engineering analysis with effective methods of incentivising homeowner engagement, a vehicle for risk communication will be developed in the form of a mobile application. An alpha version of the decision-support tool will be constructed and tested for effectiveness. The benefits to Queensland include simulation of mitigation action among homeowners, reduction of loss and suffering from severe wind events and insurance premium reductions from enhanced housing resilience.
A Genetic Management Toolkit: Developing Semen freezing and Artificial Insemination in the African Wild Dog (Lycaon pictus) (Old ID 22124)
Zoltan Sarnyai - Psychology
14 May 2015 - 01 May 2019
The African wild dog is an endangered exotic canid with an estimated 6,600 animals remaining in highly fragmented populations in the wild. Artificial Insemination (AI) combined with sperm freezing is widely regarded as one of the most powerful forms of assisted breeding technologies for the preservation, distribution and improvement of animal genetics, and offers tremendous potential for the genetic management of this socially complex species. Using captive African wild dogs, this project will test different sperm freezing protocols and develop AI techniques, so as to establish a high quality semen bank for the species. The effect of dog appeasing pheromones as an alernative method to mitigate stress and intra-pack aggression in captivity will also be validated.
Predicting neurodevelopmental outcomes of moderate to late preterm (MLP) infants: biopsychosocial and cultural determinants
Connar McShane - Psychology
08 Feb 2022 - 08 Feb 2030
This prospective, cohort study aims to identify biopsychosocial and cultural factors associated with neurodevelopmental outcomes of moderate to late preterm (MLP) infants (32 weeks and zero days to 36 weeks and six days completed gestation). This area is largely underexamined compared to infants born at earlier gestations (Bills et al., 2021; Cheong et al., 2021). Neurodevelopmental outcomes of MLP infants will be screened and assessed using standardised psychometrics (e.g., Bayley-4 A&NZ; Bayley & Aylward, 2020), and biopsychosocial and cultural factors ascertained by validated scales (e.g., Parental Stress Scale; Berry & Jones, 1995). Multiple hierarchical regression will be conducted to develop a predictive model of neurodevelopment which may inform healthcare management approaches for MLP infants and their families. This project has received HREC approval, with project commencement pending approval of a SSA. The SSA requires the completion of a JCU/THHS research contract to be drafted by JCU Connect - of which this application has been lodged for.
The Impact of Daily Physical Activity and Sleep on Resting Heart Rate and Resting Heart Rate Variability in Individuals with High and Low Stress Load
Zoltan Sarnyai - Psychology
30 Jun 2024 - 29 Jun 2025
It is known that regular physical activity decreases resting heart rate (RHR) and increases resting heart rate variability (HRV), while chronic stress increases RHR and decreases resting HRV. Although it is recommended that stressed individuals exercise to reduce their stress burden, it is unclear if they benefit from exercise to the same extent as those who do not experience stress overload. A current gap in the literature is the lack of studies investigating cardiac autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning in individuals with different chronic stress loads. The current project aims to investigate the differences in long-term ANS responses to daily physical activity in people experiencing high versus low chronic stress. We hypothesize that individuals who experience chronic stress exhibit a blunted autonomic response (less decrease in RHR and less increase in resting HRV) to daily exercise due to an inability to regulate parasympathetic activation effectively. Therefore, in this regard they won’t benefit from regular exercise as much as those who don’t experience chronic stress, owing to their decreased autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity. In order to test this hypothesis, we would like to benefit from the Tesserae dataset.
Title: ‘Men are not expected to be interested in babies’: how society lets new fathers – and their families – down, The Guardian
Reseracher: Sam Teague (Senior Lecturer, Psychology)
Start Date: 01 Jun 2025
Title: Children of parents with psychiatric diagnoses – health, development and well-being in the first year of life. A study of children born in 2002-2022 in Region Hovedstaden, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark
Reseracher: Sam Teague (Senior Lecturer, Psychology)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2025
Title: The consequences of the corona pandemic for the health and well-being of the population: part 3. A systematic literature review, Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu
Reseracher: Sam Teague (Senior Lecturer, Psychology)
Start Date: 16 Feb 2024
Title: Society of Mental Health Research
Reseracher: Wendy Li (Associate Professor)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2021
Title: The Society of Australasian Social Psychologists (SASP)
Reseracher: Wendy Li (Associate Professor)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2021
Title: Asian Journal of Social Psychology
Reseracher: Wendy Li (Associate Professor)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2024
End Date: 01 Jan 2027
Title: The Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology
Reseracher: Wendy Li (Associate Professor)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2018
Title: Co-Producer, Bamboo podcast series
Reseracher: Amanda Krause (Senior Lecturer, Psychology)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2023
End Date: 01 Jan 2027
Title: Co-Producer, Professionally Psyched podcast series
Reseracher: Amanda Krause (Senior Lecturer, Psychology)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2024
End Date: 01 Jan 2027
Title: Scientist participant, STEM Pals
Reseracher: Amanda Krause (Senior Lecturer, Psychology)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2024
End Date: 01 Jan 2026