3 SMU Social Science students won 5 awards from Singapore Psychological Society

26 Nov 2020

(From left to right): Assistant Professor Andree Hartanto, Nadyanna Majeed, Matthew Ng, Verity Lua

3 SMU Social Science undergraduates, Nadyanna Majeed, Verity Lua, and Matthew Ng, have won 5 Singapore Psychological Society’s Student Research Awards namely:

Award	Winner(s)	Project
Winner of Best Undergraduates Research	Nadyanna Majeed	Dyslexia and creativity: A meta-analysis
1st Runner-up of Best Undergraduates Research	Verity Lua, Nadyanna Majeed, and Matthew Ng	Musical experience and executive functions: A latent variable approach
Winner of Best Quantitative Research Papers	Nadyanna Majeed	Dyslexia and creativity: A meta-analysis
Runner-up of Best Quantitative Research Papers	Verity Lua, Nadyanna Majeed, and Matthew Ng	Musical experience and executive functions: A latent variable approach
Winner of Audience Choice Award	Verity Lua, Nadyanna Majeed, and Matthew Ng	Musical experience and executive functions: A latent variable approach

Singapore Psychological Society, which was founded in 1979 and has its aims the advancement of psychology as a science and a profession in Singapore. Every year, the society hosted The Students Research Awards for psychology students from Diploma level to Undergraduates and Graduates level to recognize research excellence among psychology student researchers in Singapore. The submission is open to all academic institutions in Singapore across all domains of psychology.

Abstract:

Dyslexia and creativity: A meta-analysis

Despite difficulties in reading and writing, some research suggests that dyslexia may be related to higher levels of creativity. However, this pattern is not consistently observed. The current research sought to ascertain whether individuals with clinically-diagnosed dyslexia exhibit higher creativity than controls through a meta-analysis. Fourteen studies that assessed the creativity of 397 individuals with clinically-diagnosed dyslexia and 453 controls were reviewed. Random-effects meta-analysis revealed an overall non-significant difference in creativity scores between those with dyslexia and controls. Additionally, method factors such as the type of creativity task and whether intelligence was controlled for, as well as sample-related factors such as gender, did not explain differences in the dyslexia-creativity relationship. Nonetheless, individuals with dyslexia significantly outperformed controls in creativity scores in adult samples, but not in younger children samples. Overall, the current findings provide limited support for the idea that individuals with dyslexia are more creative, and that past evidence of this relationship may be limited to adult samples.

Musical experience and executive functions: A latent variable approach

While an expanding body of studies examining the relationship between musical experience and executive functions has emerged, the evidence for such a relationship has been mixed, possibly due to methodological issues, such as low sample size and task impurity problems. Hence, the current study investigated this relationship while addressing the aforementioned methodological limitations in the existing literature. We conducted a multi-session study with a battery of nine executive functioning tasks in a sample of 175 young adults, and estimated the latent variables of inhibitory control, task-switching, and working memory capacity. We found no evidence of any relationship between musical experience and latent factors of executive functions in both frequentist and Bayesian structural equation models. The current study provides important practical and pedagogical implications in questioning the use of music lessons as an effective way to improve cognitive abilities.