Article archive / December 1, 2010
Originally published: . Volume 2, No. 4. Source pages: 14.
Psychology graduate student John Hamilton received a top award for his poster presentation at the recent conference of the National Academy of Neuropsychology (NAN) held in Vancouver, October 13-16. The poster was chosen as one of only five first place awards at the conference. This work is part of his dissertation research collected through the Baton Rouge Neuro- psychology Center where Dr. Darlyne Nemeth is his on-site research supervisor.
“This all started,” John told the Times, “because Dr. Nemeth is very active in a lot of organizations.” John has been collecting dissertation data and working closely with Dr. Nemeth for two years, having moved back to Baton Rouge, his hometown, from California. This move helped him to get his research “off the ground,” he said. When it was time for the NAN conference, “Dr. Nemeth encouraged me to submit something from my dissertation,” he said.
John’s poster and dissertation involve normative data for childrens’ emotion processing as measured by the Comprehensive Affect Testing System (CATS). He explained that the CATS is an emotion processing assessment battery that measures a variety of subtests such as facial identification and emotional matching. One relationship John is studying is between scores on the CATS and intellectual factors, the “developmental changes in emotion processing abilities…” He has found that “…over the course of development, children use different cognitive skills to understand and cope with emotional stimuli.”
John attributes his success at NAN to the many learning experiences through Dr. Nemeth’s numerous professional activities. Earlier this year John presented at LPA. “My poster at LPA’s spring meeting was to bring awareness to the importance for researchers to be thoughtful when addressing the needs of students, parents, teachers and administrators when working in a school setting.” He realized that a collaborative approach was essential to gaining support for his data collection, something he did not have in California.
He has also learned a great deal about presentations and research methods. “By doing that poster, I saw the way that Dr. Nemeth and her staff create their posters and I became familiar with the process.”
The NAN experience demanded strong presentation skills. John had to quickly communicate to the judges and audience. “…with each speaker given only three minutes to summarize his or her research,” John explained.
John had also given a presentation to the Baton Rouge Area Society of Psychologists (BRASP) which also helped him build skills for the NAN competition. And, working closely with Alex Steger, a colleague at the Center who is now a research assistant at Vanderbilt, John improved his quantitative skills.
John explained that there are not very many instruments available to measure the emotional processing in children. “This is the first time the CATS has been used with children,” he said. “Ultimately, if the CATS can be used to help identify emotional-social disorders with an emotional-social component, like Asperger’s or Autism, the test could itself, or this work might, help with identification and intervention in children.”
John Hamilton is currently a doctoral student at Palo Alto University in California. His chair at Palo Alto is Dr. William Forming. John attended Baton Rouge High and then Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC, on a soccer scholarship and he spent some time in Brazil playing professionally. “I ultimately hung up my boots after some time,” he said, “and refocused on my degree in psychology and began working with Dr. Nemeth as an extern shortly after graduating college.” John is currently applying for internships and will soon defend his dissertation.
Doctoral student John Hamilton and his award-winning NAN poster.
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