Whoops - just realised that I was a bit late with this reply! Did you have a nice time? St. Pancras is in King's Cross BTW...

I live near Camdem town - mentally busy, but nice for a mooch about. I would suggest wandering down by south bank going to the Tate and then up back through St. Paul's coming up to the Strand. Then I'd have a look round the National Portrait Gallary.

Oh dear Scamp. You seem very disillusioned. Hmmm. I see what you're saying about Cognitive Psychology - I do things similar to what you describe, and my PhD is Cognive Neuroscience.

Why do you continue? You don't seem very happy where you are. Did you do your undergraduate degree at your current university? Your department sounds suspiciously like the department where I got my BSc. Couldn't you move to a different uni?

As with everything, it seems to depend on department and field. I know someone in exactly that situation. He left his PhD a few years ago but has since worked in a department, publishing many papers in high quality journals (a couple in Nature for example). He is now rewriting these as his PhD. I guess you need to find a department that will be happy to take you on etc.

Awww, no Matthew, it makes you smart. Let's be honest, all men can look delicious in suits...

Morning Scamp. Well done on the paper, that is impressive. Are you only in your first year?!

I'm at UCL. Love the department here, but I have to work pretty hard. But its a really rewarding atmosphere.

I'm interested to know about your views on Psychology, could you tell me how you and your department think differently? Hope I'm not being to nosey - I too could talk about Psychology and the academic situation all day!

Do you at least have a research group where you are that does something similar?

BTW my apologies for the bizzare English there, I have been working way to hard lately.

Well my PhDs in a similar area, and I generally dress comfortably i.e. exactly the same as when I was an undergraduate (if they want me to look fabulous on a day-to-day level, they only need to increase my stipend...)!

When I have to interact with people outside the bubble (i.e anyone not from the department) in my capacity as a researcher, I basically go smart-casual. |I find that too smart tends to freak out the general public who then think you have to power analyses them and then section them...ah, how informed people are...

So yeah, for mooching around at work, where what you like, for working out of the Ivory Tower, nicely presented, but no scary suits

Basically I got all of my stimuli from my supervisor, but you can access most of them online I believe. The best ones are from the Karlinska institute. These are completely controlled for facial expression, clothing, luminance etc etc...

If you want to assess your own images you are going to need a huge sample of people to rate them. Then, you need to do some stats to find out whether the averages are statistically similar.

I think that the amount of people you will need to validate your stimuli is going to make using the pictures you have a bit difficult. I would suggest emailing a few of the key researchers on the papers you have been reading and seeing ifthey will email you their stimuli - you'd be surprised at how willing and generous most people are.

So are you attached to a department?

B

I would suggest smart-casual, unless you are very comfortable in suits. Its stressful enough without worrying about being uncomfortable in a suit.

Where are you applying and to do what?

I went smart casual to one of my interviews, and for the interview at my undergaduate i went straight from the gym! I think each department is different in its norms. I got ESRC funding from both!

So the lesson her is its what you say, not what you look like that really matters, but still, don't go looking like a tramp, noone wants that.

BTW you could always drop your potential supervisor a quick email, they'll know what the interviewers are likely to respond to.

Best of luck.

Wow, doing the PhD by yourself? That sounds intense. Well, my work is face perception really - so looking at how visual attention modulates perception of emotional faces. I don't use averged faces, I use either Ekman's faces, NimStim faces or faces from the Karolinska institute. These faces have been rated very thouroughly and come with the stats attached! It might be worth looking into.

Where are you at university?

This "normed" phrase seems strange to me. It seems they are either refering to the fact that they have asked people to rate the pictures and taken the average, or they have morphed them. It sounds like the former.

Right, so collect together your scores in a spreadsheet, and wack it into SPSS and work out which faces are coming up as being consistanly homogenious. I would use a correlation to start with.

What does your supervisor suggest? It seems a little odd to me, I work with face images in the area of emotional expression, and I haven't come across this term in the literature.

Wow. Well, absolute best of luck for the future. Make sure you let us know how you get on!

xBx

What do you mean? It depends what the data is all about i.e., what question are you asking?

Do you mean you wanted to see how statistically different peoples choices are from each other? If so, that's a Friedman's test. If you're looking to see how much peoples' opinions agree, thats the kelly's concordance test. etc etc..

Need to know a bit more about your data...i.e., is it parameteric, and what do you want to do with it?

Hey! My PhD's on the interaction between emotion and attention in Psychopaths. Right now, I'm the most stressed I've ever been in my life.

Where are you studying?