Developmental Psychology Section Annual Conference 2024

Programme

Please follow the link below for an online version of the conference programme including abstracts, and a downloadable version. 

You can also find information about our preconference workshop "Empowering Young Voices: Best Practices for Qualitative Research with Children and Young People", accessibility of the venue, and opportunities to join our PGR/ECR community. Click the link to find out more!

Download the conference programme

Registration

Registration must be made online.

Registration is required to attend.

Cost

Please note: all rates listed are inclusive of VAT at 20%.

Early bird rates end on July 31st 2024

Registration will close on Monday 9th September 2024 at 10:00 BST

3 Day Attendance

1 Day Attendance

Social Programme

Pre-Conference Reception September 10th 6-7pm Glasgow City Chambers

 We are delighted to invite you to a pre-conference drinks reception at the Glasgow City Chambers, a magnificent building completed in 1888 that overlooks George Square and stands as one of Glasgow's most prestigious landmarks.

The evening will include a welcoming speech from the Lord Provost/Bailie and offer an opportunity to network with fellow guests in the elegant surroundings of the City Chambers.

 Please complete this form by 27th August to indicate your attendance.

Pre-Conference Workshop: Empowering Young Voices: Best Practices for Qualitative Research with Children and Young People

September 10th 3-5pm Glasgow University: Charles Wilson Building

Qualitative research can give us insight into lived experience and develop new lines of scientific enquiry, helping us conduct research that matters. Including participant voices is critical in the modern funding landscape. Our workshop aims to provide an overview of the unique methodological, ethical, and practical challenges inherent in conducting qualitative research with younger populations. Designed for researchers, practitioners, and students, the workshop will explore innovative approaches to engaging children and young people in research, ensuring their voices are authentically represented. Key topics include the development of age-appropriate data collection techniques, navigating consent and assent processes, addressing power dynamics, and ensuring the safeguarding and well-being of participants.

This event is a free event for BPS Developmental Section Members only: please book your place here

Conference Dinner and Ceilidh

September 12th 6.30-midnight The National Piping Centre https://www.thepipingcentre.co.uk/

In true Glasgow style, on the evening of the 12th September delegates are invited to join us for a conference ceilidh. Your ticket can be selected at registration for an additional £50. This will include a three course sit down meal (with all dietary requirements catered for) and a ceilidh led by The Jiggers at the Scottish National Piping Centre. Pack your dancing shoes!

Lastly, please ask web.editor to upload the attachment to the location tab with the text "We are happy to share a range of offers for our delegates to explore the city for download here!

Financial Assistance

Current postgraduate students who are members of the Developmental Section can apply for financial assistance to attend here.

How to register

Returning customers (members and non-members)

In order to register for the event you will need to sign in using your BPS website login details.

We have implemented a new Membership Database and if you haven't received your pre-registration email you will need to request your unique registration link.

Once you have the link, you can complete your registration on our portal.

Once you have registered on the portal please use your username and password to log in and register for the event.

If you have forgotten your login details, you can reset your username or password.

New customers (members and non-members)

If you are not a returning customer, you will need to create your BPS account on the portal. The process is straightforward and takes just a few minutes.

Once you have registered on the portal please use your username and password to log in and register for the event.

Submissions

Key submission dates

• March 2024: Online submission system opens
• 13 May 2024: The deadline for symposia, Individual Papers and Workshop submissions
• 13 May 2024: The deadline for poster submissions
• June 2024: Notification of submission outcomes for symposia, individual papers and workshops
• June 2024: Notification of submission outcomes for posters

Authors are strongly advised to register on the on-line submission system and begin preparing their submissions well in advance of the following deadlines

If you wish to submit more than one abstract, please complete individual submissions for each.

How to submit

Please ensure you read the submission guidelines below before submitting, including the reviewer guidelines. These allow you to see how your submissions will be reviewed.

Access the Submission Guidelines.

Submissions must be made via  the online application portal.

If this is your first time submitting you will need to create an account.

• Submit all submissions except symposium
• Submit symposia

If you any queries please contact us at [email protected].

Speakers

BPS Developmental Section Conference 2024 Keynotes

Professor Camilla Gilmore, Loughborough University

Camilla Gilmore is Professor of Mathematical Cognition at Loughborough University and leads the ESRC Centre for Early Mathematics Learning. She has previously held positions at Oxford, Harvard and Nottingham. Her research focuses on understanding how we acquire and process mathematical ideas and what this means for mathematics education. This work has a particular focus on the cognitive and environmental influences on the development of early numeracy.

Understanding the complexities of mathematical cognition

Mathematics skills are associated with future employment, well-being, and quality of life. However, many children fail to learn the mathematics skills they require. This may be in part due to the multi-componential and hierarchical nature of mathematics and the wide variety of cognitive skills and processes involved. I will present evidence for a framework for conceptualising the nature of mathematical learning and highlight the implications of this for research and educational practice

Professor Heather Ferguson, University of Kent

Heather Ferguson is a Professor in Psychology at the University of Kent. Prior to this, she completed her PhD in psychology at the University of Glasgow and a post-doc in linguistics at University College London. Her research examines social communication across the lifespan (from adolescence through to old age) and in autistic populations. It typically employs real-time measures and interactive paradigms to explore the time-course of mental state inferences and use. Her current research projects seek to examine some of the contexts and mechanisms that influence successful social interaction and meaning in conversation, including executive functioning, social networks, sleep and exposure to the arts.

Heather has served the discipline in a number of roles, including as Honorary Secretary for the Experimental Psychology Society, as a current Associate Editor for the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, and a member of the UKRI Cross Research Council grant panel. She also actively supports the careers and employability of junior colleagues and students through formal mentoring and training.

Distinguishing mechanisms for social-cognitive development and decline across the lifespan

Successful social interaction relies upon the ability to detect and respond appropriately to social information in one's environment (i.e. social attention) and to infer other people's perspectives and mental states (i.e. their beliefs and intentions, known as Theory of Mind). These abilities in turn enable us to engage in prosocial behaviours, such as helping and cooperating with others. In this talk I will present data from a series of studies that have explored the lifespan development of these social-cognitive skills, and will highlight particular methodological and conceptual challenges to this lifespan approach. I will also discuss what these studies have revealed about the mechanisms that underlie social-cognitive success in general, and the specific developmental influences that distinguish patterns of development during adolescence and decline in older age.

Japanese Society of Developmental Psychology Prize Winner Talk.

Dr. Junko Okuyama, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

Dr. Junko Okuyama is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Health Service Center, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. Her research focuses on the healthy development of children and adolescents under stress. She is researching new psychotherapies using digital technology to deal with situations in which large numbers of children and adolescents require psychological therapy simultaneously, such as in cases of natural disasters.

Dr. Junko received her Ph.D. in medicine from the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, where she conducted research on psychological support for high-school students affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake. She has twice been awarded the Tohoku Psychiatric Association's Best Presentation Award for her psychological research on stress caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic and received a research grant from the Nakatani Foundation.

Introducing New Technology to Support the Physical and Mental Development of Children and Adolescents in School

Japanese schools conduct annual health checkups of children and adolescents, a practice that is very rare in other countries. While Japanese schools are responsible for managing the physical and mental health of children and adolescents, it is difficult to conduct detailed checkups on everyone.

In this lecture, I will introduce an example of the introduction of digital devices for female students at a Japanese sports university to support the physical and mental health of children and adolescents in schools. It will demonstrate the clinical usefulness of introducing digital devices to evaluate psychological states and premenstrual dysphoric syndrome (PMS). 

This lecture begins by explaining the smartphone app "me-fullness," which estimates psychological states based on facial information and suggests improvement programs. Next, the lecture will introduce a study aimed at improving the mental and physical health of adolescents using the me-fullness app based on data from a study of female students at the Faculty of Physical Education, International Pacific University. The lecture will discuss the problems with the design and dissemination of this study, with particular focus on the future introduction of digital devices. 

Overall, this study shows that new technologies will play an important role in ensuring the careful monitoring of the mental and physical development of adolescents in schools. 

BPS Developmental Section Award Winner Talks

BPS Developmental Section Distinguished Contributions Award

Professor Elizabeth Meins, University of York

Elizabeth Meins (FAcSS) has been studying how parents interact with their children for over 30 years. In 1997, she developed the concept of caregiver mind-mindedness—the ability to "tune in" to the baby's thoughts and feelings. A considerable body of research in the intervening years has shown that early mind-mindedness predicts wide-ranging positive aspects of children's development. 

Elizabeth completed her undergraduate degree and PhD at the University of Cambridge, and has been a Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of York since 2013. Her research on mind-mindedness was submitted as an Impact Case Study in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercises in 2014 and 2021. She served on the REF2021 Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience Panel, and has been involved in similar national research assessment exercises in the Netherlands and Hong Kong. She was chosen to represent the sub-discipline of developmental psychology in formulating the British Psychological Society's research priorities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mind-reading for beginners: How early mind-mindedness predicts development across the first two decades of life

Research has shown that early caregiver mind-mindedness predicts secure caregiver–child attachment and better language, symbolic play and mentalizing abilities across the first five years of life. Some of our work has shown that mind-mindedness may mitigate the effects of social and economic disadvantage on children's development in areas such as behavioural difficulties and educational attainment. In this talk, I will discuss our long-term longitudinal research which indicates that mind-mindedness predicts positive educational and mental health outcomes for disadvantaged children into late adolescence and early adulthood. I will also discuss how we have developed and trialled interventions that aim to facilitate mind-mindedness.

BPS Developmental Section Impact and Engagement Award

Professor Mary Hanley, Durham University

Dr Mary Hanley is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Durham University. She is a Co-founder and Co-Director for the Centre for Neurodiversity and Development at Durham University and she is on the Autism Steering Group for County Durham. 

Mary's research is broadly about understanding strengths and difficulties for neurodiverse groups, mostly for autistic people and people with Williams syndrome. Mary is especially interested in how challenges with attention, sensory arousal and anxiety interact with each other and impact on engaging and learning at school.  Over the last number of years, she has focussed on translating this research evidence to practice within education, to change practice and benefit neurodivergent children and young people. The approach taken in this work is collaborative (e.g. with Durham County Council, Investing in Children) and participatory. Mary is committed to impact and engagement beyond the academy, and has worked closely with many key stakeholder organisations linked to her research, including the Williams syndrome Association of Ireland, the Williams Syndrome Foundation UK, the North East Autism Society. In 2021 she established the Junior Scientist Programme at Durham University – a summer event designed to bring local families into the University and engage them in psychological science. 

Supporting autistic and neurodivergent learners in school with Triple-A: Attention, Arousal and Anxiety

School environments (both primary and secondary) are busy, multisensory and unpredictable. Whether it is the hustle and bustle of lots of students in and outside of class, the walls of classrooms and corridors adorned with information displays or colourful artwork, or the smells from the canteen, toilets or changing rooms – there is so much going on at school that learners have to be able to cope with in order to be able to engage and learn. This presents unique challenges for autistic and neurodivergent learners, because this broad group of children and young people tend to have difficulties with attention, sensory arousal, and anxiety.  Through our research, we argue that these three related difficulties, which we refer to as 'Triple-A', underpin many of the challenges that autistic and neurodivergent learners experience at school. Over 70% of autistic learners attend mainstream school settings, meaning that this really is an issue requiring support and understanding across the board. And it is on the national agenda -  supporting neurodiversity at school is a key focus of the Office of the Children's Commissioner in the 'Big Ambition for Education'. 

In this talk, I will give an overview of our research on these issues and how we have gone about translating this evidence to impact– mainly via our Triple-A online training for educators (www.tripleadurham.co.uk). Triple-A is a co-produced training package (with non-academic and academic stakeholders) which provides evidence-based psychoeducation as well as a suite of practical support strategies. Since launching in 2022, Triple-A has reached over 7000 users, mostly in the UK (but also further afield) and the evidence of impact is very positive. I will talk about what this impact journey has involved, the way that Triple-A is evolving (into whole-school in-person training, inclusion into teacher training), and how engaging in impact work has led to new research on school experiences for autistic and neurodivergent learners – especially around school distress and attendance difficulties. I will also reflect on 'doing impact work' from my own experiences of leading the Triple-A programme.   

BPS Developmental Psychology Section Neil O'Connor Award

Dr. Jo Saul, University College London

Jo Saul is a Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow at University College London. Her research investigates individual differences in language development across neuro-developmental conditions, and how language impairment impacts mental health, learning and wellbeing. She is also interested in intervention development and evaluation, particularly in how technology may be able to make interventions more accessible to help those with complex neurodevelopmental conditions. Her current project is a transdiagnostic longitudinal study of atypical language development in children with no or only minimal spoken language.  Prior to starting her fellowship, she held a lectureship teaching statistical research methods at UCL, where she also completed her PhD. 

Elucidating mechanisms of language growth in minimally verbal children

Some children with neuro-developmental conditions, including autism, intellectual disability or rare genetic syndromes, do not acquire functional speech during childhood.  This restricts their opportunity for community participation, independence and self-advocacy and can impact physical and mental wellbeing. This talk describes work aiming to better understand mechanisms underpinning minimally verbal status. A longitudinal study of expressive language in minimally verbal autistic pre-schoolers found speech sounds at intake were significant predictors of later expressive language, whereas initial socio-cognitive variables were not. This may suggest we cannot generalize findings about expressive language predictors in autism to those with more complex communication profiles, and that some minimally verbal children with autism may have additional speech-motor barriers to expressive communication.  Ongoing work to robustly investigate the role of speech skills will be discussed.

BPS Developmental Psychology Section Margaret Donaldson Award

Dr Maheen Siddiqui

Dr Maheen Siddiqui is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck. Her research focuses on developing new brain imaging techniques to understand early typical and atypical brain development. Maheen is particularly interested in understanding how brain energy metabolism shapes brain development and subsequent functional specialisation. 

Maheen completed her PhD in Psychology at Birkbeck in 2018, on the BBSRC funded LIDo Doctoral Training Programme. She was subsequently awarded the ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship followed by the Wellcome Early Career Award. 

Functional specialisation in infancy: insights from multi-modal neuroimaging

Neurovascular coupling (NVC) refers to the complex process whereby mechanisms involved in neural activity and synaptic transmission mediate cortical cerebral blood flow to supply oxygen to activated brain regions. Non-invasive measures of brain function are sensitive to different individual parts of this pathway – electroencephalography (EEG) measures the synchronised neural activity, whilst functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measure changes in haemoglobin in the blood. However, while such techniques have provided valuable evidence of brain specialisation (in typical development) and early differences in brain activity (in atypical brain development), when used individually they provide limited insight into NVC. Therefore, limiting our understanding of how NVC mechanisms may shape functional specialisation and how these mechanisms may influence an alternate developmental trajectory. 

In this talk, I will be presenting infant data from multi-modal neuroimaging studies combining measures of neural activity, haemodynamics and brain energy metabolism. I will be focusing on broadband NIRS (bNIRS), a novel technique that allows measurement of a non-invasive biomarker of brain function. 

Location

The conference will be held in the Sir Charles Wilson Building, University of Glasgow, 1 University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QQ

Find out more about the building (including accessibility arrangements).

The University of Glasgow is situated in the West End, with a variety of small hotels and guest houses nearby, as well as links to the City Centre hotels by Subway.

The closest Subway station to the main University campus is Hillhead and the closest stations for the City Centre are Buchanan Street and St. Enoch.

Accommodation

There are many available accommodation options in Glasgow.

View our recommended accommodation options.

Offers and discounts

Enjoy more of Glasgow with special offers on tours and restaurants for attendees.

Explore our delegate offers.