Psychology Student to Present Research at Conference

A second year Psychology student at St Mary’s University, Twickenham has been called to present her research at a student conference organised by the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP). Lara Naqvi has had an abstract accepted for the International Student Conference at Loughborough University, which takes place from 21st-22nd February. Her poster presentation will explore the study she carried out for her research module in the Foundation Degree in Psychology and Counselling last year, looking at the effect of Music Tempo and Athletic Performance: An Examination of Expert and Novice Runners. Participants of the study were selected and grouped based on their athletic abilities; experts were identified as running more than three times a week and novices as running less than once a week. Each was asked to perform a 200m sprint with both low and high tempo versions of the same music track, and the time taken to complete the sprint was noted. The main findings suggested that expert runners were unaffected by either high or low tempo music while novice runners improved their sprint time over 200m with a higher tempo, suggesting that music choice might be an important influence for novice runners. During the inaugural conference run by the AASP, presentations will be delivered by undergraduate and postgraduate students with interests within the domain of sport, exercise, health, and well-being psychology. Along with the presentations are workshops, keynote speakers and the conference concludes with an awards ceremony. One of the keynote speakers includes Head of Psychology at the English Institute of Sport (EIS) Pete Lindsay, who will discuss Applied and Performance Enhancement Psychology. Lara said, “I am very excited to have the opportunity to attend and present my research at the student conference, and I am very grateful for the support from the Psychology department in putting together my poster for presentation.”