SPARC - Stress, Performance, Ability, Resiliency & Cognition

SPARC research group

From mental and physical stress to mind-blowing performance, healthy coping skills and mental wellbeing, SPARC (Stress, Performance, Ability, Resiliency & Cognition) is a group of researchers from the University of Canberra who research how people, groups and organisations manage adversity, the impacts of work or personal demands, yet flourish and perform at optimal levels.

We are a multi-disciplinary research group who use robust methods and evidence to assist people and organisations achieve quality outcomes. We draw our evidence from the cognitive and neurosciences, organisational behaviour and management psychology, stress and resiliency research, evolutionary biology, and positive and wellbeing psychology.

We have a proven track record and expertise working with specialised law enforcement, science, health and defence commonwealth and government agencies, not-for-profits, private sector organisations, and collaborating with researchers both nationally and internationally at other world leading universities.

As a group we offer:

consultancy/contract research for one-off or ongoing projects
program evaluation and outcome monitoring
supervision at undergraduate, Honours, Masters and PhD level
research development workshops and support.

Professional associations

Our research group has members that belong to the following associations.

APS College of Clinical Psychologists
Association for Psychological Science
Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society (ACNS)
Australian Academy of the Forensic Sciences
Australian and New Zealand Association of Forensic Science
Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology
Australian Psychological Society (APS)
Australian Society for Human Behavior and Evolution
Human Behavior and Evolution Society
New Zealand Psychological Society
Society for Personality and Social Psychology
Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues
Society of Australasian Social Psychologists

Enquiries

Find out more about our research.

Send an email

People

Name	Discipline	Research interests
Asst Prof Judy Buchholz	Psychology	Attentional processes in anxiety and dyslexia, pain and trauma
Dr Janie Busby Grant	Psychology	Cognitive research including memory, future-oriented thought and decision making
Dr Andrew Flood	Psychology	Pain, athletes and endurance exercise
Assoc Prof Phil Kavanagh	Psychology	Psychopathology from an evolutionary psychology perspective. Self-esteem associated with social acceptance and rejection
Dr Sally Kelty	Psychology	Disruption of child exploitation and other online abuse. Mental wellbeing in forensic science and medical practitioners. Psychological profiles of top performers
Dr Carly Pymont	Psychology	Stressors in organisations, focus on primary health care
Asst Prof Jeroen van Boxtel	Psychology	Links between attention and conscious perception, the influence of attention on biological motion perception, and the influence of noise on visual processing

Projects

Project title	Contact	Description
No burn out at forensic coal face: a multi-pronged approach to managing organisational stressors for digital forensics experts	Dr Sally Kelty	This project will identify the unique personal and organisational factors that lead to the development and maintenance of stress and burnout. Understanding these factors law enforcement agencies with evidence-based avenues to make changes that protect against stress. Researchers: Dr Sally Kelty, Emma McQueen, and Dr Carly Pymont
Mapping critical-decisions and group dynamics that enhance effective suspicious death investigations	Dr Sally Kelty	This projects assesses the impact of critical decision making on effective outcomes in police investigations (from the crime scene throughout the investigation) Researchers: Dr Sally Kelty and Dr Léan O'Brien.
Adding noise to improve perception	Asst Prof Jeroen van Boxtel	Humans are generally very good at perceiving visual stimuli. Adding noise generally makes this perception worse. However, there are cases where adding noise helps. We want to find out whether we can use this phenomenon to make people (with or without vision problems) see better.
The interaction between attention and consciousness	Asst Prof Jeroen van Boxtel	We will investigate visual stimuli that have the curious feature of disappearing more rapidly when you pay attention to it, and aim to determine why this occurs. This should help us understand how the brain produces conscious visual perceptions.
Creating an attention profile: the relationship between different attention tasks, and how they impact conscious perception	Asst Prof Jeroen van Boxtel	We will compile a set of attention tasks with intuitive and counterintuitive effects of attention, aiming to find patterns across observers that help us determine the underlying structure (covariances) of these attentional tasks.
How perception of social stimuli depends links to autism spectrum traits	Asst Prof Jeroen van Boxtel	Face or action stimuli convey a lot of social information. However, not everyone is equally attuned to these cues. In this project we aim to investigate individual differences in the sensitivity to social stimuli.
Individual differences in planning and decision-making	Dr Janie Busby Grant	Research examining episodic future thinking, temporal perspective taking and the impact on behaviour.
Performance enhancing effects of tDCS	Dr Andrew Flood	tDCS is a non-invasive form of electrical brain stimulation that allows for neuromodulation of targeted brain regions. We aim to explore its potential as a performance-enhancing tool in physical and cognitive performance domains.
An integrated approach to monitoring and improving resilience and readiness in the tactical athlete	Dr Andrew Flood	This project aims to profile the psychological and physical characteristics that contribute to the maintenance of cognitive performance while under stress.
Life history strategies of clinicians	Assoc Prof Phil Kavanagh	This research project aims to test the concept that there is discrepancy between life history strategies between those who make diagnoses versus those who receive them
Testing a life history theory model of psychopathology	Assoc Prof Phil Kavanagh	Multiple projects examining life history theory models of psychopathology.
The influence of stress and psychosocial job quality on mental health	Dr Carly Pymont	Examining the influence of a range of stressors on mental health and the influences, protective factors and moderators of the impact
Pedagogical Research	Dr Carly Pymont	Examine effective teaching methodologies and predictors of student success
Applications of motor imagery training: a psychological perspective.	Asst Prof Judy Buchholz	Examines potential benefits of motor imagery to brain aging, motor learning, childhood development, athletic performance and clinical conditions.
Visual attentional processing of Clinical Populations	Asst Prof Judy Buchholz	Examines the relationship between various aspects of visual attention and clinical conditions such as Dyslexia and Anxiety.

HDR students

Name	Project description
Sharon Daniel	Title: The influence of attention in the haptic domain We aim to research whether conscious perception exists in the near absence of attention in the haptic domain. We look both in the typically developing population and in people with functional motor disorders. This project is run at Monash University
Annaleise Naylor	Title: A Mixed Method Investigation Exploring Physical Activity in Adults with a Severe Mental Illness This PhD project aims to first identify the motivators for engaging in physical activity in those with a serious mental illness. This information will then be used to create a physical activity intervention.
Umut Dogan	Title: Psychological strategies in sport: Improving conceptual matters, development and validation of an assessment tool, and development of a self-contained, theory-based improvement tool This PhD project aims to better understand the psychological strategies used by athletes before and during competition.
Jessica Du	Title: Episodic future thinking in anxiety This PhD project aims to explore the role of episodic future thinking in generalised anxiety and its impact on problem solving and everyday functioning