PsychSoc – what happened in Hilary

It’s been a full term for Oxford Psychology Society.  We had a couple of really fun socials as well as lots of interesting speaker events.  There’s loads more coming up next term. Like the page – www.facebook.com/oxfordpsychsoc for information about our upcoming events and other fun things.  Here’s what happened in Hilary:

Careers events

There were two careers events this term.  Firstly, an Open Careers Session given by Claire Chesworth from the Careers Service. It was an informal opportunity to chat about psychology-related careers and improve CVs.  It was very useful to those involved, and for those who missed out we will probably be doing another one next term…

After a slight snow postponement, we also had a talk about Educational Psychology from James Gillum and Ed Chilton this term.  With most of the people in the audience not knowing much about educational psychology it was really interesting to hear the diverse work they do in schools, with the local educational authority and with individual children.  They also made someone make a lego car.  It was good fun!

Speakers

As to slightly more serious (but no less fun) speaker events, we had some really interesting talks from Peter Halligan, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Cecilia Heyes.  Peter Halligan (of the famous hemispatial neglect paper by Marshall & Halligan, 1988) came to talk about “Consciousness and Volition: Some Insights from Neuropsychology”, discussing how brain damage can help us understand healthy brains and vice versa.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, who was a very lovely person as well as a very interesting speaker, came to talk about the social brain in adolescence.  She described how social areas in the brain are changing and developing through adolescence, with some changes driven by puberty hormones and others driven simply by age (experience of social interactions), and how this may contribute to teenage behaviour.

Finally, Cecilia Heyes was a great way to finish the term talking about associative learning and describing methodological flaws in influential experiments that seemed obvious once she pointed them out, but clearly weren’t to the authors.  It was thought-provoking and an interesting perspective on learning.

Overall, it was a really good term, thanks to everyone who came along to our events.  Come join us next term when we will have more fascinating speaker events, useful careers speakers and some post-exam socials.