Research on the psychological stress experienced by sport performers and on autism and social cognition has won two early-career researchers an award from the British Psychological Society.
Dr Rachel Arnold, who completed a PhD at Loughborough University, and Dr Lauren Marsh, who completed a PhD at the University of Nottingham, have shared this year’s Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research Contributions to Psychology.
The award is made each year by the British Psychological Society’s Research Board to recognise outstanding contributions to psychological knowledge made in the course of completing a doctorate in Psychology. Candidates are judge on the basis of one or two published articles reporting the research they carried out for their degree.
Each of the winners will receive a £500 prize and be invited to deliver a lecture based on their research at the Society's Annual Conference next year.
Dr Rachel Arnold’s first paper synthesised more than 20 years of psychology research to identify and classify the many different organizational stressors that sport performers encounter. Her second paper developed and validated a new indicator to measure those demands: the Organizational Stressor Indicator for Sports Performers (OSI-SP).
Dr Arnold is now a lecturer in Sport and Performance Psychology at the University of Bath.
Dr Lauren Marsh’s first paper provided evidence that children with autism, unlike neurotypical children, do not copy unnecessary actions when asked to complete a task by copying an adult. The second looks at mechanisms in the brain that allow us to understand rational and irrational actions by other people.
Dr Marsh is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bristol in the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre. She is conducting research into how children think about ownership and possession and how this relates to their developing sense of self.
Professor Dorothy Miell, the President of the British Psychological Society, says:
“We were delighted to make awards to two such strong candidates. In both cases their work not only evidences outstanding research skills but also has clear applications and value for groups in society. The Society is delighted to see such strong examples of excellent work being done by the next generation of researchers in Psychology. I wish them all the best for their future careers.”