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Group

Ageing and Lifespan Research Group

Unit(s) of assessment: Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience

Research theme: Health and Wellbeing

School: School of Social Sciences

Overview

The group’s research focuses on changes in psychological functioning in early-life development, ageing and age-related clinical conditions.

The members’ current interests span visual perception, motor control, attention, memory, working life, the living environment and cross-cultural approaches to lifelong well being. In the childhood and adolescence period of the lifespan, we are working on the role of psychomotor factors in the development of assistive frameworks for individuals on the autistic spectrum.

In the adult phase, our group is studying psychological aspects of the workplace. In ageing phase, we are investigating changes to visual perception, attention, and memory, with applied interests in the management of dementia. We are also studying psychological factors in the control of balance and movement, with applied interests in old age mobility. The group also conducts research on the sociocultural aspects of lifespan psychology, including self and family perceptions across cultures, resilience and indigenous communities, positive ageing and lifespan perspectives on well being.

Collaboration

Mobility scooter use (Duncan Guest): Nottingham City Council, Shopmobility, TGA Mobility.

Sensorimotor coordination and ageing (Suvo Mitra and Hayley Boulton): Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil (School of Physical Education, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy) and Washington University, St Louis, MO, USA (Department of Neurology.

Related staff

Publications

Badham, S.P., Sanborn, A.N., & Maylor, E.A. (2017). Deficits in category learning in older adults: rule-based versus clustering accounts. Psychology and Aging, 32(5), 473-488.

Badham, S.P., Hay, M., Foxon, N., Kaur, K., & Maylor, E.A. (2016). When does prior knowledge disproportionately benefit older adults’ memory? Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 23(3), 1-28.

Maylor, E.A., & Badham, S.P. (2018). Effects of time of day on age-related associative deficits. Psychology and Aging, 33(1), 7-16.

Buckell, A., Westwood, J., Palfrey, M. & Coope, B. (2017). It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it. UK Journal of Dementia Care, 25 (5), 18-19.

La Fontaine, J., Buckell, A. & Oyebode, J. (2015) Creative support for complex needs: living with bvFTD (Pt 1). UK Journal of Dementia Care, 23(1), 24-27.

La Fontaine, J., Buckell, A. & Oyebode, J. (2015) Creative Support for complex needs: living with bvFTD (Pt 2). UK Journal of Dementia Care, 23(2), pp24-27

Guest, D., Howard, C. J., Brown, L. A., & Gleeson, H. (2015). Aging and the rate of visual information processing. Journal of Vision, 15(14):10, 1–25, doi:10.1167/15.14.10.

Gkiontsi, D., & Karanika-Murray, M. (2016). Dealing with economic and demographic challenges: workplace innovation practices as a timely and effective response to older workers’ needs. European Journal of Workplace Innovation, 2(1), pp. 25-42.

Karanika-Murray, M., & Biron, C. (2019). The health-performance framework of presenteeism: Towards understanding an adaptive behaviour. Human Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726719827081.

Mitra, S., Doherty, N., Boulton, H., & Maylor, E. A. (2016). Age-related reversal of postural adjustment characteristics during motor imagery. Psychology and aging, 31(8), 958.

Vaz, D.V., Pinto, V.A., Junior, R.R.S., Mattos, D.J.S., & Mitra, S. (2019). Coordination in adults with neurological impairment – A systematic review of uncontrolled manifold studies. Gait and Posture, 69, 66-78. doi: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2019.01.003.

Srisupornkornkool, K., Wongcheen, P., Klongkhayan, W., Warnjiang, W., Rassameejan, S., Somthavil, S., Boonyarom, O., & Mitra, S. (2019). Age-related differences in brain activity during physical and imagined sit-to-stand in healthy young and older adults. Journal of Physical Therapy Science, 31(5), 440-448.

Choudhry, F.R., Khan, T.M., Park, M.S.-A., & Golden, K.J. (2018). Mental health conceptualization and resilience factors in the Kalasha youth: an indigenous ethnic and religious minority community in Pakistan. Frontiers in Public Health, 6:187. ISSN 2296-2565.

Ilias, K., Cornish, K., Kummar, A.S., & Park, M.S.-A. (2018). Parenting stress and resilience in parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Southeast Asia: a systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology, 9:280. ISSN 1664-1078.

Related projects

Recent externally funded research projects:

Road Safety Trust (Guest): Hazard perception in mobility scooter users at road crossings.

BIAL Foundation (Badham): Dissociating working memory and inhibition deficits as a result of healthy and unhealthy ageing.

BIAL Foundation (Howard): Neural correlates of tracking changing positions of objects.

Newton Fund (Mitra): Effects of attentional focus on movement coordination.

Facilities

The group’s research facilities include dedicated laboratories for EEG (BioSemi), transcranial magnetic stimulation (MagStim), electromyography (Delsys), motion capture (Codamotion) and ground reaction force (Kistler, AMTI) studies. In addition, members can utilise NTU’s recently installed magnetic resonance imaging facilities. Group members also have access to treadmills and mobile eye-tracking facilities for mobility research.