SPECTRA Labs are a series of interconnected labs which combine psychology with technologies such as extended realities, gamification and objective sensory metrics. Labs include the Medical Education Lab, the Social Training and Anxiety Research Lab, and the Mental Illness and Neurodiverse Digital Health Hub. 

Medical Education Lab (MEL)

The aim of the Medical Education Lab (MEL) is to implement a data driven approach to capture and analyse individual and group cognitions, behaviour and performance to understand the mechanisms and processes that account for differences between superior and less skilled performance with the aim of reducing performance learning curves. MEL offers cross-disciplinary performance training and assessment, including the investigation of the psychological impact of new digital technologies such as virtual, augmented and mixed realities; haptics; eye-tracking; 3D object recognition; data capture systems; human-robot interaction; gaming and visualisation technologies; and surgical robotics.

These measures provide opportunities for feedback and reflection. By measuring attention and movement kinematics including hand-eye coordination, posture and gestures during procedures, learning profiles can be identified and individual differences can be categorised to predict performance, and provide objective feedback to learners. We use the expert performance approach (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Römer, 1993) to capture expert performance, identify underlying mechanisms and develop expertise.  

Social Training and Anxiety Research (STAR) Lab

The STAR Lab investigates cognitive biases in social perception using video, eye movements and other sensory metrics, verbal reports and experimental procedures to identify cognitive mechanisms associated with social anxiety and confidence.

Mental Illness and Neurodiverse Digital Health (MIND) Hub

MIND Hub aims to provide a range of services including high value curation services, digital content creation, objective and subjective metrics all integrated into three sub-component analytical research platforms that will enable a fully integrated master system. This will be used for research, validation and testing services, cohort building, expert consultancy and statistical modelling services.

For more details on SPECTRA Labs, contact Dr Mel McKendrick.