First year PhD student Leah Sharman made a presentation in December 2015 in Sydney at the annual meeting of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology. She talked about some of our recent research involving mimicry of sadness (via facial EMG) and the perception of tears. She also won a travel award from the society. Congratulations, Leah!
Our lab is currently developing a model of how empathy (and counter-empathy) is elicited by (human and non-human) others. We've been meeting weekly to work on it, as we prepare a roadmap for the lab's research programme for the next two years. Here's a glimpse of what we've come up with. Feel free to let us know what you think!
Just a note that Dr. Vanman will be supervising 2-3 honours students in 2015. You can read more details here.
Eric Vanman is currently in Germany on a four-month stay at Jacobs University in Bremen, where he's working with members of Prof. Arvid Kappas's X-Lab. Among the interests of that lab is the interaction of humans with robots (particularly with respect to programming them to be "empathic"). Eric returns to UQ in mid-December.
Sarah Grainger is off to Europe to attend the Autumn school on the Assessment of Emotional Intelligence/Competence in Ghent, Belgium, November 23-29, 2014. You can read more about the school here.
On October 23rd, 2014, ABC's "Catalyst" programme featured a visit to the UQ Social Neuroscience Lab. Dr. Vanman was interviewed about the lab's recent research on the perception of tears. Dave Cowan, a PhD student in the lab, was also involved in the filming (about his eye tracking research), but didn't survive the final cut in what was aired. Here's a link to the program for your viewing pleasure: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4112797.htm