Dear German and Chinese Members of the IRTG “Adaptive Minds”,

We are happy to send you the second edition of the IRTG Newsletter, which is circulated among all German and Chinese IRTG members in more or less regular intervals (ca. every 2-3 months or when-ever appropriate). Please do not hesitate to give us your feedback or suggestions on the contents of the current or future IRTG newsletters.

Best regards, The coordination team of the IRTG at the German side Axel, Hubert, Theo & Johanna

1.) New IRTG Members

Darren Rhodes, qualifying fellow/future PhD student in Hubert Zimmer’s group from 1st August:

Darren Rhodes will be the first ‘qualifying fellow’ of the IRTG. Qualifying fellows are graduates who start their PhD immediately after the Bachelor (as is quite common in Anglo-Saxon countries), whe-reby they are attending courses of the academic Master programme in Psychology during the first year (i.e. qualifying period) of the PhD and focusing at the research project from the second to the fourth year. The difference to the ‘traditional’ way of doing a PhD after the Master degree is that qualifying fellows pursue a ‘fast-track PhD’ which allows them working on a doctoral project imme-diately after the Bachelor degree without having to formally acquire the Master degree. Here is a short introduction of our first qualifying fellow:

“Hi, my name is Darren Rhodes. I have just finished my undergraduate de-gree in Cognitive Neuroscience at Bangor University in Wales; however, I am natively from Wednesbury in the ‘midlands’ of England. Beginning in August, I am honoured to start my PhD at the IRTG with Prof. Hubert Zim-mer. Specifically we will be investigating the structure and processes of vis-ual working memory. I have recently visited the Saarland and found it to be stunningly beautiful: I cannot wait to get started, meet new friends and to do some science.”

In addition, several ‘regular’ new PhD students will soon begin their work in the IRTG:

Balázs Fehér, PhD student in Jutta Kray’s group from 1st September:

“Hello! My name is Balázs Fehér, I am going to join the IRTG as a PhD stu-dent from September under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jutta Kray. Some of you I have already met a few weeks ago, therefore I am looking forward to meet you again. And for the ones I have not met on my first short visit, here are some basic information about me. I have received my MA degree in Psychology this year at the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, where I have been involved in auditory cognition and have gained a little experience with ERP research. I hope we will have the opportunity to exchange ideas and to get to know each other.”

Timea Folyi, PhD student in Dirk Wentura’s group from 1st September:

“Hello, my name is Timea Folyi and I will start my PhD in Prof. Dr. Wentura's research group from September. I came from Hungary and recently finished my MA studies in Cognitive Psychology at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. My main research experience comes from the field of attention and auditory cognition, using EEG/ERP method. I am looking forward to meet everyone and to start my PhD studies as a member of the IRTG fami-ly!”

Cheng-hua Bai, PhD student in Axel Mecklinger’s group from 1st Sep-tember:

“Dear everyone, I am Cheng-hua Bai, who is close to accomplish a Re-search Master’s degree in the Donders Graduate School for Cognitive Neuroscience at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Since 1st of September, I will start my PhD under the supervision of Prof. Axel Mecklinger. I am very excited to continue my higher education in Germa-ny and I wish to share the best time in Saarbruecken with you.”

Hannah Schmitt, PhD student in Jutta Kray’s group from 1st October:

“Hello, my name is Hannah Schmitt and I am one of the new IRTG PhD students beginning in October 2011. I graduated in June 2011 at Saarland University and now I am spending the summer months at the University of Hull, UK, in order to gain additional knowledge in the field of neuro-cognitive psychology. I am very curious about working in the IRTG-group and I am looking forward to meeting you all at fall school in St. Goar!”

Sara Studte, PhD student in Axel Mecklinger’s group from 1st October:

“Hi, I am Sara, born in Flensburg, I recently finished my studies of Biology in Oldenburg. After that I went to the "Melbourne Neuropsychiatric cen-tre" doing a research internship for six months. Now I am going to work in the lab of Prof. Dr. Mecklinger as one of the new PhD students of the IRTG. Traveling, languages, several social activities, reading and writing are a few of my interests. I greatly look forward to join you all in October! See you soon!”

Michael Kursawe, PhD student in Hubert Zimmer’s group from 1st No-vember:

“Hello, my name is Michael Kursawe and I am one of the new PhD stu-dents in the IRTG. I will start in November 2011 in a project of Prof. Dr. Zimmer. I am 28 years old and I began studying psychology at the Saar-land University in 2006. After finishing my diploma thesis this summer, I am looking forward to meet all of you.”

2.) IRTG News

The first doctoral scholarship holder of the IRTG at the German side has handed in her doctoral thesis in May, namely Julia Schneiders. We would like to congratulate Julia for having finalized her thesis “Visual and Auditory Vocabulary Acquisition in Learning Chinese as a Second Language: The Impact of Modality-Specific Working Memory Training“. As you all know, Julia now works as the second post-doc in the IRTG “Adaptive Minds”.

With regard to the doctoral students of the IRTG at the Chinese side, i.e. the Chinese PhD students who have passed a research stay at Saarland University, we would like to give you a brief update on where and in which position our Chinese PhD students and graduates are working now (many thanks to Lamei Wang who collected the following information). Most of the Chinese PhD students of the IRTH have already successfully obtained the doctoral degree, for which we would like to cordially congratulate them:

Lamei Wang: “I get my Ph.D. degree in June. Soon I will start to work as an assistant profes-sor in Professor Liqi Zhu’s Developmental Psychology group in our institute.”

Sirui Wang: “I am graduating from the Institute of Psychology in June and getting my PhD degree at the same time. Fortunately, I've got a research position on in the Dept. of Applica-tion and Development of the Institute of Psychology.”

Huiming Sun: “After graduating from IPCAS, I got a job in a military school in China, teaching and doing research about military psychology in Nanjing. It is quite a different life as that in Saarland University and IPCAS. It is more strict and secrete. It emphasizes the application of psychology to military service. That is totally different of my original topic, if not the distance, I will ask the help for Dear Hubert again and again. Nanjing (http://english.nanjing.gov.cn/) is a Chinese old capital, it has lots of famous places of interest and relics of olden times. If you – my dear friends – have the chance to come to Nanjing, please for sure contact me :-) tel: +86-18252000579.”

Hanyu Shao: “Internship with Cognitive and Brain Diseases Research Center, Hangzhou Nor-mal University. Currently working on a project aiming to investigate the mechanism of read-ing in the brain.”

Liping Lu: “During the IRTG “Adaptive Minds” study, I learned a lot and published a paper in Intelligence. Now I work as a psychological teacher in the High School affiliated to Renmin University of China.”

Kui Wang: “Kui Wang is an assistant professor in Professor Chuqiao Chan's Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at IP-CAS. Currently, she is at home, enjoying the time together with her baby daughter who was newly born on 31st May 2011.”

3.) New IRTG Publications

We would like to happily announce a new Sino-German journal paper of the IRTG that will soon be published:

Wang, L., Fu, X., Zimmer, H.D., & Aschersleben, G. (in press). Familiarity and complexity modulate the way children imitate tool-use actions: A cross-cultural study. Journal of Cogni-tive Psychology.

Congratulations to the authors Lamei, Xiaolan, Hubert, and Gisa for publishing this paper!

The website that lists all publications of the IRTG has been updated with this reference (please let Theo Jaeger know if any publication of yours is missing):

http://www.uni-saarland.de/de/campus/forschung/forschungsaktivitaeten/graduiertenkollegs/graduiertenkolleg-adaptive-minds/publications.html

4.) Second Sino-German Fall School of the IRTG in October 2011

As already announced in the IRTG Newsletter from May, we will organize the second Sino-German Fall School in St. Goar (Germany) from 2-8 October 2011. It will be a joint event by the partner institu-tions of the IRTG – Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IP-CAS) and Departments of Psychology and Neuroradiology of Saarland Uni-versity.

The Fall School will take place in the Castle Rheinfels in St. Goar. The Castle is situated in the Loreley valley, which is included in the UNESCO world heritage list and “certainly one of the most romantic spots in Germany”. The 4 star castle hotel is set on a hilltop overlooking the Rhine river and is part of one of the biggest castle com-plexes in Germany.

In total, ca. 40 researchers will take part in the Sino-German Fall School. From the Chinese side, there will be 4 professors, 2 associate professors, 3 assistant profes-sors, 6 doctoral students, and the head of the adminis-tration unit. From the German side, all professors, post-docs, and current doctoral scholarship holders (including Jing Zhao) will take part in the event.

Finally, there will be between six renowned invited speakers. We are happy to announce that the professors John Aggleton (School of Psychology, Cardiff University), Ed Awh (Institute of Neuros-cience, University of Oregon), Xun Liu (Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing), Klaus Oberauer (Department of Psychology, University of Zurich), and Tanja Michael (Department of Psychology, Saarland University) accepted our invitation to be guest speakers during our Sino-German Fall School. Are you able to associate the following pictures with the names of these guest speakers?

Some further impressions of the nice venue for the Fall School can be found at: http://www.uni-saarland.de/de/campus/forschung/forschungsaktivitaeten/graduiertenkollegs/graduiertenkolleg-adaptive-minds/study-program/winter-term-201112/fall-school-2011-in-st-goar.html