News
2024
October
First German-language textbook on “Applied Cognitive Psychology” published
01.10.2024
Why is cognitive-psychological research certainly basic research on the one hand, but also of particular relevance for applied contexts? Prof. Dr. Jan Rummel (Heidelberg) and Prof. Dr. Markus Janczyk have published Angewandte Kognitionspsychologie (engl. "Applied Cognitive Psychology"), the first German-language textbook on this topic. The book first presents and discusses the relation of basic and applied research and their mutual stimulation. The following chapters then introduce cognitive-psychological foundations, their methodological approaches and main results and illustrate them in applied contexts. The covered topics focus on learning, memory, attention, action, deciding, and reasoning. The book thus illustrates how Cognitive Psychology addresses questions such as "How do we learn successful?", "Which principles should be considered when designing cockpits?", "How can we can successfully counter fake-news?" and that Cognitive Pychology has important contributions to offer.
August
“Best Article Award 2024” of the Psychonomic Society for PD Dr. Heinrich Liesefeld
16.08.2024
An essential prerequisite for scientific discourse is that the participants understand each other. Unfortunately, this is often not the case, but researchers from different theoretical camps employ different terms for the same construct or the same term for different constructs. An international team of researchers led by Heinrich Liesefeld and Dominique Lamy (Tel Aviv University) has tackled this problem for research on visual distraction. In extensive discussions, we identified and defined the most central terms in the debate. The resulting paper is not only a reference work for experts but also provides an easy entry point into the topic for junior researchers. Heinrich Liesefeld now receives the Psychonomic Society’s 2024 Best Article Award for this work.
July
3rd poster congress and summer party of the Institute of Psychology
This year's poster congress of the empirical-experimental research internship of the Institute of Psychology took place on 5th July 2024. The students presented their research projects to their fellow students and employees of the Institute and there was lively discussion.
We would like to congratulate the winners of the poster prizes, especially the group "Menstrual cycle and cognitive functions", consisting of Felicia Bodenstein, Aileen Grube, Tugay Yilmaz, Alexandra Hunold and Lena Subgang, who received both the 1st place of the student prize and the 1st place of the jury prize this year.
The evening came to a well-deserved close with a joint summer party organized by the student council.
May
Valentin Koob (Group "Psychological Research Methods and Cognitive Psychology") was awarded a scholarship for a two-month research stay in the USA. He will spend August and September at the Washington University in St. Louis and will pursue research on conflict control in collaboration together with Prof. Julie Bugg.
April
Prof. Dr. Kandler has been elected to the World Association for Personality Psychology
Prof. Dr. Christian Kandler was elected to the Executive Committee Members Board of the World Association for Personality Psychology at the World Conference on Personality in April 2024.
The WAPP aims to expand personality psychology and the science of individual and cultural differences worldwide, to promote the exchange of information between individuals and between regional and continental organizations, and to establish international cooperation between regional associations.
Further information on WAPP can be found on the homepage.
February
Two new professorships in clinical psychology
The two professorships in Clinical Psychology at Faculty 11 have been filled in time for the 2024 summer semester. Prof. Dr. Barbara Cludius took over the Professorship of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy of Adult Ageing on 1 February and Prof. Dr. Lars White took up the Professorship of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy of Childhood and Adolescence on 1 April. This means that the “Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy” licensing course, which has been planned for several years, can start in the 2024/25 winter semester.
Prof. Dr. Barbara Cludius moved from LMU Munich to the University of Bremen. There she was awarded the Princess Therese of Bavaria Prize for outstanding scientific achievement in 2023. In her research, she combines (experimental) basic research with psychotherapy research. She investigates the role of transdiagnostic processes, in particular perfectionism and emotion regulation, in the development and maintenance of various mental disorders. A further research focus is in the area of obsessive-compulsive disorder. As a licensed psychological psychotherapist (behavioral therapy), she is co-director of the Psychotherapeutic University Outpatient Clinic across the Lifespan (PULS), which is currently being rebuilt and will be used for practical elements of the licensure program.
Prof. Dr. Lars White moved from the University of Leipzig and the Psychological University of Berlin to the University of Bremen. His research focuses on the biopsychosocial mechanisms that underlie early attachment experiences and trauma and can be the starting point for the development and maintenance of mental disorders in childhood. He also sees these mechanisms as central starting points for the treatment of these disorders, the effectiveness of which he is currently examining in randomized control group studies. He is particularly interested in the mechanisms of action of psychodynamic short-term child therapies. In 2021, he received the New Investigator Award from the World Association for Infant Mental Health (WAIMH) for his research. As a licensed child and adolescent therapist (specializing in depth psychology), he is co-director of the Psychotherapeutic University Outpatient Clinic across the Lifespan (PULS).
2023
October
This year's prize for an outstanding Master's thesis in personality psychology goes to Jana Instinske
Jana Instinske receives this year's prize for an outstanding Master's thesis in personality psychology, which is published by the DPPD specialist group and sponsored by Pearson Verlag. A three-member review panel, which evaluated the nominees and theses on a comparative basis, judged the overall standard of the nominated theses to be outstanding. Nevertheless, Instinske's thesis stood out and she was able to assert herself as this year's award winner. The review panel issued the following appraisal (quoted verbatim):
“In her thesis, Jana Instinske analyzes established operationalizations of the constructs self-esteem, locus of control, self-efficacy and emotional stability in twin pairs using multivariate genetic informative structural equation modeling. She compares so-called common factor models with independent pathway models. The high theoretical and practical relevance of this work is particularly noteworthy, as it examines similarities and differences in fundamental personality traits that are central to many areas of application. On the other hand, her work stands out for its methodological complexity and quality, as complex statistical procedures are successfully applied to quantify genetic and environmental sources of inter-individual differences.”
The award ceremony will take place on Monday, September 25, from approx. 13:10 to 15:00 at this year's DPPD conference in Salzburg.
The english version of the statistics textbook authored by Prof. Markus Janczyk and Prof. Roland Pfister (Universität Trier) has been published with Springer as "Understanding inferential statistics. From A for significance test to Z for confidence interval.".
August
High honor for employees of the Institute of Psychology at the Faculty of Human and Health Sciences at the University of Bremen
Prof. Dr. Dr. Manfred Herrmann, head of the Neuropsychology and Behavioral Neurobiology working group at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Bremen, was awarded honorary membership of the professional society together with Prof. Dr. Willmes and Prof. Dr. Wallesch at the 38th annual conference of the Society for Neuropsychology (GNP) in Berlin on 31 August 2023 “for his great services in the field of neuropsychology”.
With over 1700 members, the GNP is one of the largest international scientific societies in the field of neuropsychology. Since the GNP was founded in 1986, nine scientists from Germany and abroad have been awarded honorary membership of the GNP.
July
The 2nd funding phase of the DFG Research Unit FOR 2718 “Modal and Amodal Cognition: Functions and Interactions“ approved (Speaker: Prof. Dr. Barbara Kaup, University of Tübingen) was approved. Prof. Dr. Markus Janczyk is PI of the research unit’s projects A2 (“Amodal and modal representations in planning and control of human action“, with Prof. Dr. Volker Franz, University of Tübingen) and A4 ("Executive functions: Are amodal representations involved in proactive control?", with Dr. Carolin Dudschig and Prof. Dr. Hartmut Leuthold, University of Tübingen).
June
Dr. Christian Panitz starts his position as a Research Associate in the Department of Developmental Psychology with Educational Psychology.
Negin Javaheri, member of the IfP group “Neuropsychology and Behavioral Neurobiology” (Prof. Dr. Dr. Manfred Herrmann) and PhD student at the international DFG research training group (GRK 2739 „KD²School - Designing Adaptive Systems For Economic Decision-Making”; https://kd2school.info) was awarded the Best Poster Award at the 19th NeuroPsychoEconomics Conference (NPEC) that took place at the University of Granada, Spain in 2023.
May
PD Dr. Heinrich Liesefeld and Prof. Dr. Markus Janczyk were granted the project "Validating (easy) measures to combine speed and accuracy" from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG; 3 years, 100% postdoc position, travel and other funds).
How do colors affect us and what feelings do they arouse? Prof. Kulke answers these and other questions to "buten un binnen" in the following video contribution: https://www.butenunbinnen.de/videos/farben-menschen-macht-gefuehle-pyschologie-100.html
April
Prof. Nadira Faber joins the Department of Psychology as professor for Social Psychology with Work and Organisational Psychology. Prof Nadira Faber got offered associate membership of the Philosophy Faculty at the University of Oxford.
2021
May
Prof. Dr. Dr. Manfred Herrmann and Prof. Dr. Bettina von Helversen together with Prof. Dr. Tanja Schultz (FB 3) were granted the subproject "Decision Making for Cognitive Architectures - Neuronal Signatures and Behavioral Data" by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the context of the continued funding of the Collaborative Research Center "Everyday Activity Science and Engineering" (SFB EASE).
The IfP group “Neuropsychology and Behavioral Neurobiology” (Prof. Dr. Dr. Manfred Herrmann) is member of an international DFG research training group (GRK 2739 „KD²School - Designing Adaptive Systems For Economic Decision-Making) that “focuses on enabling the next generation of scholars to develop adaptive systems that support economic decision-making.
April
Prof Rainer Malaka (FB 3) and Prof Bettina von Helversen receive a Seed-Grant from the science cluster „Mind Media and Machines“ at the University of Bremen to conduct the project "Effects of Control and Directness on Decision-Making in VR“.
Prof. Markus Janczyk was offered and accepted becoming a member of the Wilhelm-Wundt-Gesellschaft, a society dedicated to promote basic research in psychology.
2020
June
Markus Janczyk was awarded the Wilhelm Wundt Society's Science Award for his achievements in basic psychological research. More information can be found here.