Profile
Vassilis Sideropoulos
My CV
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Education:
Queen Margaret University
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Work History:
University College London, London South Bank University, Queen Margaret University,
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Employer:
University College London
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About Me:
Vassilis Sideropoulos works in the Department of Psychology and Human Development, at ΙΟΕ, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. He has over 6 years of experience as a data specialist. My expertise lies in the areas of mental health, education and randomised optimisation trials. My research endeavours are diverse in nature, but they are all centre on the field of mental health. Primary area of focus is anxiety, depression, and loneliness in neurotypical and neurodivergent populations, such as autistic children and young people. -
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Additionally, I am interested in studying the mental health and educational trajectories of postgraduate research students. Furthermore, I am actively engaged in the development of randomised optimisation trials for behaviour change interventions, such as those aimed at smoking cessation.
Methodologically, I employs a variety of approaches in my research, ranging from developmental, community-based, participatory approaches to large-scale longitudinal and cross-sectional surveys, secondary data and interviews.
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My pronouns are:
He/his
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What question could we try to answer together?:
You all feel sometimes that you cannot focus in class or in a movie theatre and pay attention to the teacher or the movie, right? This is what I am interested in exploring with you. Understanding how our human brain is overloading and takes specific information into processing and how it “throws” other away depending on the environment we are.
Specifically, I am interested in exploring with you how visual patterns, like the ones you can see below, make your attention better or worse.
See images here:
this is an illusion room and it is a very busy environment
this is another illusion, but it’s easier compared to the one above:
and then we have this type of environments that are very relaxing and it’s easier to focus on doing specific things, e.g. watch a football match
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What do we already know about this area?:
I have done some work in that area and we already know that very busy patterns can make our attention and then memory worse. For instance when participants had to solve problems and look at this image their focus was very bad (see below). But when we used a less complicated pattern (see below) their attention and ability to remember what they did was better.
when people had to solve math equation in this background they performed poorly:
but in this one they performed much better:
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What do I need help with from students?:
Hurray! I need your help to do this project!
- Decide together if we want to use illusions as visual distraction (busy images) or other images that you believe make our attention worse.
- Decide together if we want to use a specific task that people will perform during the presentation of the image
- Finally, I want you to design a few of the materials for the experiment (your own illusions or busy environments) and tell me what distracts you in different places (school, home, garden)
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Why you should vote for this project::
This project is going to be a fun project, you will explore a variety of different visual illusions and you will have to think about different things such as “why can’t I pay attention to this class? is it because it’s small and it has a lot of things inside? I really like the teacher and this topic.” You will also think about how you interact in different environment and how this influences your attention and then memory. Isn’t that amazing?!
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Ambitious, Methodical, Confident
What did you want to be after you left school?
Psychologist
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Maybe I was!
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Florence + The Machine
What's your favourite food?
Pizza and Fish and Chips!
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
Make a change in young people's mental health; be happy and healthy; wish for a better world!?
Tell us a joke.
What is a sea monster’s favorite snack? Ships and dip!
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