Sunway Psychology Day 2019 a Huge Success!
On 8 August 2019, the Department of Psychology, with help from the Sunway Education Group Department of Marketing organised the Sunway Psychology Day 2019. This event included a talk, two workshops, laboratory tours as well as student showcases of psychological experiments and mind games, all between 1.30pm and 4.00pm.
Assoc Prof Dr Alvin Ng speaking to an almost packed JC1 hall.
Associate Professor Dr Alvin Ng started the event with a talk on “How does #SocialMedia affect our #MentalHealth & #Relationships?” His usual interactive style engaged an audience of about more than 400 people, with college students making up a vast majority, while the rest were parents with interest in psychology.
After the talk, many visitors packed the two psychology laboratories: the Human Development Lab and the Human Performance Lab to find out more about the research activities there. Dr Yong Min Hooi and Ms Woo Pei Jun led the lab tours for the Human Performance Lab and the Human Development Lab, respectively.
Dr Yong Min Hooi explaining the eye-tracker device and its related research projects to the visitors at the Human Performance Lab.
Dr Yong explaining the brain scan results from the EEG machine to the visitors.
Many of the visitors were fascinated by the lab equipment in both laboratories and had many questions for both Dr Yong and Ms Woo. The two research academics had to field non-stop groups of visitors in shifts into their respective laboratories. They were assisted by their research assistants. The Human Performance Lab has the electroencephalograph (EEG) machine within a Faraday cage and a TOBII eye-tracker device, while the Human Development Lab houses the Sunway Baby Lab (https://university.sunway.edu.my/sci-tech/facilities/sunway-baby-lab).
Research Assistant Ms Ng J-Wen, describing procedures of the Sunway Baby Lab to the visitors
Visitors also participated in workshops given by Dr Priyadarshini Moharkonda Srinivasan and Ms Elaine Yong, who ran two sessions of workshops each. Dr Priyadarshini ran workshops on managing stress, while Ms Yong ran workshops on understanding children’s world. Both workshops were very well attended.
Dr Priyadarshini conducting her workshop on “Stress is Fun”.
Visitors also got to try their hand at some psychology experiments organised by the Sunway Psychology Club overseen by Dr Elizaveta Berezina. These brief experiments gave visitors some insight into applied psychology methods in studying about human behavioural and cognitive functioning.
All in all, the Sunway Psychology Day was a very successful event in that initial venues had to be moved to larger venues to accommodate the large number of visitors who were interested in psychology. This year’s event had a significant increase in participants compared to the one in 2018. This success has prompted the organisers to have this event as an annual one given the strong interest in the field of psychology.
