During each day of the conference, a leading scientist will provide a keynote lecture. Currently, these keynote lectures have been confirmed: 

 

Monday 5 June 9:15 - 10:15

Keynote Lecture - Matthias Mehl

Quotidian Psychology:

How the Little Things in Life Matter for Our Lives

 

 

Matthias R. Mehl

University of Arizona

 

 

In psychology – as well as in the social sciences more broadly – major life events have historically been in the theoretical spotlight of what is considered to impact human health and wellbeing. Marriage, childbirth, divorce, or death of a loved one; moving and starting a new job, receiving a promotion, or getting unemployed; being diagnosed with a life-changing or life-threatening illness or personally or vicariously experiencing a trauma – these are the critical life events that have received the vast majority of scientific attention in the field. The late ecological psychologist, Kenneth Craik, insightfully said that “lives are lived day by day, one day at a time, from day to day, day after day, day in day out … lives as we experience and observe them are inherently quotidian.” In this talk, I adopt such a “quotidian” theoretical perspective. Drawing broadly on ambulatory assessment research, including the naturalistic observation research I have been part of for the last 25 years, I will illustrate how the “little things in life”, “the 98% experiences and behaviors” that make up most of our lives are much more than “supporting actors” on the psychological science stage and can matter profoundly for human health and wellbeing.

About professor Mehl

Matthias Mehl is a social and personality psychologist with interest in the conceptualization and measurement of how social processes affect health and wellbeing. Methodologically, he uses ambulatory assessment for studying daily life and has helped pioneer novel methods of real-world data collection. One of these methods involves the unobtrusive sampling of ambient sounds via a mobile recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). He has extensively published and given workshops on ambulatory assessment methods. Together with Tamlin Conner, he co-edited the Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Daily Life and, together with Michael Eid, Cornelia Wrzus, Gabriela Harari, and Ulrich Ebner-Priemer, he is co-editing the new Handbook of Mobile Sensing in Psychology.  He is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona where he also holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Communication, the Division of Family Studies and Human Development, the Arizona Cancer Center, and the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute. His research has been funded, among other sources, by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, and the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity (IARPA). He is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and a founding member of the Society for Ambulatory Assessment.

 

Tuesday 6 June 9:15 - 10:15

Keynote Lecture - Faith Matcham

Digital Sensing in Major Depressive Disorder – Long-term engagement with remote measurement technologies, and early indicators of relapse prediction.

 

Faith Matcham

University of Sussex

 

 

Remote Measurement Technologies such as wearable devices and smartphone sensors have potential to revolutionise the way in which we monitor chronic conditions. Providing high-frequency, objective information with minimal burden to the user, we can gather a rich understanding of daily variability in symptoms, contextualised against self-reported experiences.

The Remote Assessment of Disease and Relapse – Major Depressive Disorder (RADAR-MDD) was a longitudinal cohort study, aiming to examine the feasibility of long-term digital sensing in an MDD population, and use data collected via remote measurement technologies to identify early signs of relapse. The study recruited over 600 individuals with recurrent MDD from sites in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona, and asked participants to wear a FitBit, answer app-delivered questionnaires, and provide passively-collected smartphone sensor data for a median follow-up time of 18 months. The resulting dataset is the largest multiparametric digital dataset in a clinical population in the world.

This lecture will share some of the key learnings from this international research project. We will discuss the feasibility and acceptability of large-scale passive and active data collection in people with recurrent MDD and examine the predictors of long-term engagement with remote monitoring. Some of the latest findings from our analyses, examining longitudinal predictors of depression severity and relapse will be presented alongside some of the critical implications for clinical implementation.

About Dr Matcham

Dr Faith Matcham is a Health Psychologist and digital mental health researcher with a specialist interest in digital technologies, mental health and comorbidities. Her main area of interest is using commercially available technologies to improve measurement and management of long-term illnesses, and provide targeted, tailored interventions. She has published extensively, and presented at international conferences throughout her career, as well as delivering workshops and training to clinicians and early career researchers in the use of digital technologies to improve research protocols and clinical practice.

She is a Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of Sussex where she leads a multidisciplinary research team dedicated to the use of digital technologies to improve health and wellbeing. She holds grants from several UK and European funding bodies including the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Medical Research Council and European Health Research Authority, to conduct a range of studies involving the development of new sensors to monitor health, and the wider implementation of digital technology in healthcare delivery.

 

Wednesday 6 June 9:15 - 10:15

Keynote Lecture - Marieke Schreuder

Can we use repeatedly assessed emotions to forecast worsening mental health?

 

 

Marieke Schreuder

KU Leuven

 

 

Vulnerability to mental disorders may manifest in people’s day to day emotions. Specifically, complex systems approaches to psychopathology propose that worsening symptoms may be preceded by rising autocorrelations and variances in repeatedly assessed emotions. These changing emotion dynamics can thus be considered early warning signals (EWS) for mental disorders. If EWS would indeed be sensitive and specific markers for worsening mental health, they could aid the early detection (and eventually, prevention) of mental disorders. I therefore conducted a preregistered empirical study into the predictive utility of EWS. At-risk youth (N=122, mean age 23.6 ±0.7 years, 57% males) from the clinical cohort of Tracking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS-CC) provided daily emotion assessments for six months. I analyzed whether EWS preceded transitions towards psychopathology. Across indicators and a range of analytical options, EWS had low sensitivity and moderate specificity. Thus, in the present sample, the proposed generic nature and clinical utility of EWS could not be substantiated. With this lecture, I hope to provide a more nuanced view on the application of complex systems principles to psychopathology. Additionally, I will discuss an alternative theoretical and methodological framework for monitoring vulnerability for mental ill-health in people’s daily emotions.

About Dr Schreuder

Marieke Schreuder has a background in biological and clinical psychology, and began her PhD research in April 2017 as a member of the Transitions in Depression (TRANS-ID) team in Groningen. Supervised by prof. Marieke Wichers, dr. Catharina Hartman, and dr. Hanneke Wigman, she studied the development of mental disorders in at-risk youth through the lens of complex systems. This also involved designing and conducting an intensive diary study, in which at-risk young adults reported their emotions every evening for six consecutive months. With the resulting data, she examined whether worsening mental health is anticipated by within-person changes in emotion dynamics. This revealed some challenging limitations in complex systems approaches to mental health.

After completing her PhD research, Marieke continued as a postdoctoral researcher at the KU Leuven, working together with prof. Eva Ceulemans and prof. Peter Kuppens. Here, she is looking into novel theoretical/methodological frameworks for detecting emerging mental disorders in advance. As a member of the Re-Connect team, she is also involved in an experience sampling study in romantic couples with and without major depressive disorder.