Applying gaze-contingent training within community settings to infants from diverse SES backgrounds

Even in infancy children from low-SES backgrounds differ in frontal cortex functioning and, by the start of preschool, they frequently show poor performance on executive functions including attention control. These differences may causally mediate later difficulties in academic learning. Here, we present a study to assess the feasibility of using computerized paradigms to train attention control in infants, delivered weekly over five sessions in early intervention centres for low-SES families. Thirty-three 12-month-old infants were recruited, of whom 23 completed the training. Our results showed the feasibility of repeat-visit cognitive training within community settings. Training-related improvements were found, relative to active controls, on tasks assessing visual sustained attention, saccadic reaction time, and rule learning, whereas trend improvements were found on assessments of short-term memory. No significant improvements were found in task switching. These results warrant further investigation into the potential of this method for targeting ‘at-risk’ infants in community settings.

An integrated psychology virtual research ethics committee

Research and professional ethics are an integral part of every Psychology degree, as this is seen as a key graduate learning outcome for students leaving to become clinicians working with clients and patients. The development of these skills is embedded in teaching, but they culminate in the final year of a degree when final year students must gain formal ethical approval for their final research project. Decision as to the ethical appropriateness of research are made by a Departmental Research Ethics Committee, which considers all research project proposals submitted by staff and students within the department. One of the challenges of this practice is the scale of work involved for committee members (Doyle & Buckley, 2014) who are all faculty members, and the tracking of applications and decisions, alongside the quality assurance required to ensure that all applications are treated fairly and equally. The time involved in performing this work is often underestimated by Universities, and the variety and complexity of decisions requires extensive discussion and negotiation. Traditionally, these decisions are reached by committee discussions, however this presents logistical difficulties as it requires meetings with quorate attendance. The University of Westminster launched a virtual tool in 2014 to facilitate the management of the Research Ethics Committee, to help track the progress of applications and to allow discussions to occur and be managed virtually. The Department of Psychology adopted the tools in September 2014 to deal with all ethics applications. Here we report on how this virtual committee has affected the role and practices of a working committee that deals with over 300 applications per year, and how an online ethics procedure has facilitated an integrated developmental approach to ethical education.