Nadine Stirling

I am a fourth-year PhD student in the Forensic and Clinical Cognition Lab. I initially volunteered with the Forensic and Clinical Cognition Lab while completing my undergraduate degree in Psychology. In 2020, I continued working with the Lab to complete my Honours project. My thesis focused on disentangling the effect of stress—both acute and chronic—on prospective memory performance (i.e., our memory for future intentions).

My current research aims to examine ethical issues associated with psychological trauma research. One area of this research specifically focuses on how participants react to participating in trauma-based research. Another important area of this research aims to determine whether risk-warnings used during the consent process alter participant expectancies, and subsequently, cause nocebo effects (i.e., expecting a negative outcome can inadvertently cause this outcome to occur or worsen the outcome). This research has implications for Institutional Review Boards and researchers.

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