IRTG Newsletter June 2013 Dear German and Chinese members

IRTG Newsletter
June 2013
Dear German and Chinese members
of the IRTG “Adaptive Minds”,
We are glad to send you the eighth edition of the IRTG Newsletter, which is circulated among all German and Chinese IRTG members in more or less regular intervals
(ca. every 2-4 months or whenever appropriate). Please do not hesitate to give us
your feedback on or suggestions for the contents of the current or future IRTG
newsletters. For example, all German and Chinese IRTG members are invited to
always inform us about new developments in their publication record or scientific
career.
Best regards,
The coordination team of the IRTG at the German site
Axel, Hubert, Theo & Marcelle
1.) New IRTG Members
New coordination assistant in the IRTG. Since April 2013, Marcelle Groß is the new
coordination assistant in the IRTG. She will closely collaborate with the coordinator
Theo Jäger. We wish Florian Gast, the previous coordination assistant, an informative time during his practical training and good luck for his further career.
“Hello, my name is Marcelle Groß, I'm 21 and I come from Homburg in the beautiful Saarland. I’ve just started my 4th semester
studying psychology at the UdS and since 1st April I’m the new
coordination assistant in the IRTG. As well as psychological
research, I am also interested in organization and coordination
connected with this, so I’m looking forward to working with you
and supporting the IRTG.”
Maxine Luley, new associated doctoral researcher
“My Name is Maxine Luley, I am 25 years old and I am a new associated PhD student in the IRTG. I have studied Psychology at the
Saarland University and graduated in 2012. Since October 2012 I
work as a clinical neuropsychologist and research assistant at the
clinic for Neurology at the Saarland University, investigating
neurodegenerative disorders. My PhD project aims at investigating the causes of pre-hospital delay of patients with an acute
stroke. I am looking forward to working and cooperating with the
IRTG and meeting all of you!”
New qualifying fellows in the IRTG. Since April 2013, the IRTG “Adaptive Minds” has
three new qualifying fellows who aim at carrying out a fast-track PhD. They are students
from Saarland University at the Master level and receive financial support by the IRTG
for the duration of one year aimed at supporting the completion of Master courses
during the (“qualifying phase”) and the integrated pursuit of a doctoral project in the
IRTG. We would like to warmly welcome the three new qualifying fellows and are
looking forward to closely collaborating with them during the next four years.
“Hi all,
My name is Benjamin and I am currently a student in my second semester of the master course Psychology at Saarland University. I was awarded a scholarship at the IRTG to begin my PhD right now in the working
group of Prof. Hubert Zimmer. During an internship with Prof. Zimmer's
group and my bachelor thesis written within the work unit of Prof. Wentura, I was able to experience different research methods in cognitive
psychology. In my leisure time I enjoy doing sports, like climbing, hiking
and martial arts, making music as I've started learning to play the guitar
and also computer gaming. I'm looking forward to be part of a great
team at the IRTG and to improve my research skills together with you.”
“My Name is Florian Domnick, I am 22 years old and I have finished my
Bachelor´s degree in 2012 at Saarland University. For my Bachelor´s
thesis I studied efficient solving strategies in a matrices-based intelligence test. Beginning in April 2013, I will continue my Master studies
within the fast track program of the IRTG and afterwards, I will start my
PhD project supervised by Prof. Spinath and Prof. Zimmer. In my free time
I like doing sports, hiking and cooking with friends. I am looking forward
to meeting you all.”
“Hello, my name is Demian Scherer. I finished my bachelor degree in
psychology at the Saarland University last year and I am going to start
doing my PhD at the IRTG under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Wentura next
year. In my bachelor thesis I investigated familiarity and recollection of
faces during the first two fixations. As a student research assistant I
became acquainted with research on valence and emotions. In my PhD
thesis I would like to integrate the topics human memory and emotions.
I am looking forward to meeting all of you!”
2.) IRTG News
Careers of IRTG members
Kerstin Unger, postdoctoral research fellow in the IRTG since October 2012, has taken up
a new postdoctoral position at the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological
Sciences at Brown University in Providence (USA) since 1st May 2013. We would like to
thank her for her highly valuable contributions to the work and success of the IRTG during
the recent years and we wish her a pleasant start at Brown University and a successful
further career. Her new job is framed by a cooperation between the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory (head: Dima Amso) and the Badre Lab (head: David
Badre). She is going to use fMRI to examine developmental trajectories of complex rule
use and how they relate to changes in functional efficiency at the level of the frontal
cortex.
First IRTG Thesis Award
Thanks to a special support by the presidium of Saarland University, a Thesis Award can
be granted to the first generation of doctoral researchers of the IRTG. The Award consists
of 500,- € and shall be used for research purposes (e.g., national or international conference or research visits). All applications for this reward were reviewed by two external
reviewers. They independently suggested René Liesefeld as award winner. We would thus
like to warmly congratulate him for having received the first IRTG Thesis Award and a very
positive evaluation of his dissertation „The mental representation in mental rotation : Its
content, timing and neuronal source“. Please find below an excerpt from one of the
reviewer’s evaluation:
“[...] beeindruckt [...] Herr Liesefeld nicht nur durch eine bemerkenswerte Dissertation, sondern
auch durch eine beachtliche Liste von Aktivitäten, die er außerhalb seiner Arbeiten an der
Dissertation verfolgt hat. Hierzu gehören der Erwerb von Kenntnissen verschiedener Sprachen, die damit verbundenen Auslandsaufenthalte (China, Frankreich) [...] sowie seine Tätigkeit als Reviewer für verschiedene renommierte Fachzeitschriften. [...] Seine Dissertationsexperimente halte ich für bahnbrechend. Der Nachweis, dass die Rotation visuell wahrgenommener Reize nicht an „visuellen mentalen Reizen“ vorgenommen wird, sondern auf einer rekodierten räumlich-relationalen Repräsentation beruht, stellte die mentale Rotation in einem
neuen Licht dar. [...].”
3.) New IRTG Publications
We would like to happily announce the following new papers of IRTG members that have
recently been accepted for publication in internationally acknowledged journals and
congratulate the current and former IRTG PhD students Lena, Anna Katharina, Markus,
Heike, Liping, and Kathrin for their successful publications:
Michael, T., Streb, M., & Häller P. (in press). PTSD in paramedics: Direct versus indirect
threats, posttraumatic cognitions, and dealing with intrusions. International Journal of
Cognitive Therapy.
Reinhart, S., Schmidt, L., Kuhn, C., Rosenthal, A., Schenk, T., Keller, I., Kerkhoff, G. (in press).
Limb activation ameliorates body schema deficits in spatial neglect. Frontiers in Human
Neuroscience.
Schmidt, L., Artinger, F., Stumpf, O., & Kerkhoff G.(in press). Differential effects of galvanic
vestibular stimulation on arm position sense in right- versus left-handers. Neuropsychologia.
Schmidt, L., Keller, L., Utz, K.S., Artinger, F., Stumpf, O., & Kerkhoff, G. (in press). Galvanic
vestibular stimulation improves arm position sense in spatial neglect - a Sham-stimulation-controlled study. Neurorehabilitation & Neural Repair..
Schmidt, L., Utz, K.S., Depper, L., Adams, M., Schaadt, A.-K., Reinhart, S., & Kerkhoff, G.
(2013). Now you feel both: Galvanic vestibular stimulation induces lasting improvements
in the rehabilitation of chronic tactile extinction. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 1-11.
Streb, M., Häller, P., & Michael, T. (2013, in press). PTSD in paramedics: Resilience and sense
of coherence. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy.
Weber, H.S., Lu, L., Shi, J. & Spinath, F.M. (in press). The roles of cognitive and noncognitive
predictors in explaining school achievement in elementary school. Learning and Individual Differences.
The website that lists all publications of the IRTG (see “Publications” website at www.
adaptiveminds.de) has been updated accordingly. Please let Theo know in case any publication of yours is missing.
4.) Homepage of the IRTG
The IRTG website contains information on all IRTG members. Please inform the coordinator of the IRTG if you want to change, update, or delete information on your person, for
example CVs, affiliations etc.
Saarland University
Dept. of Psychology
Dept. of Neuroradiology
Saarbrücken, Germany
Institute of Psychology
Chinese Academy
of Sciences
Beijing, China