Maree Hunt, PhD
Contact: maree.hunt@vuw.ac.nz
Our lab research focuses on gambling, impulsivity, and risky decision making. I contribute to all research projects in the lab.
You can view Maree’s staff profile on the Victoria University of Wellington website.
Anne Macaskill, PhD
Contact: anne.macaskill@vuw.ac.nz
View Anne’s Google Scholar profile.
In addition to human learning lab projects about impulsivity and gambling:
I am part of a TLRI-funded team working on a project about information literacy. Read updates about our project on our project blog here.
I have recently completed a three-year fellowship project investigating gambling funded by a research grant from Te Rau Matatini.
I am on the steering committee for VicTeach
I am the secretary for the NZ Association for Behaviour Analysis
You can view Anne’s staff profile on the Victoria University of Wellington website.
Postgraduate Students
Geraldine Smieszhala, PhD student
Contact: geraldine.smieszhala@vuw.ac.nz
Imagine a doctor offers you a medication with a 90% chance of preventing future ill health but a 30% chance of producing side effects. How do people approach this kind of decision, and how do their responses to these kinds of risks change over time as they experience preventive effects and/or side effects? My research explores these kinds of decisions about prevention of risky outcomes in medical contexts.
Annabelle Hammond, MSc student
Generally, the literature states that, when choosing between two alternatives, the self-controlled alternative is optimal, while the impulsive alternative is sub-optimal. However, recent research in the Human Learning Lab has found that some people say that the would choose the self-controlled alternative, but think that they should choose the impulsive alternative. My research investigates why people think that they should make choices that the research pegs as inherently sub-optimal, when they think that they would actually make a more advantageous choice.
Rebecca Olsen, PhD student
Rebecca completed her PhD in 2020!
Students often have to chose how to allocate their time between study and other activities such as paid work. How do they make these choices? Does the fact that academic outcomes – assignment marks, course grades, degrees – are delayed affect their choices? My research investigates decisions about studying, and other important everyday things from a delay discounting perspective.
Rana Asgarova, PhD Student
Contact: rana.asgarova@vuw.ac.nz
Rana completed her PhD in 2019!
My research investigates how people make decisions when outcomes are uncertain. For example, if you had a choice between $100 for certain, or a 60% chance of $200, what would you chose? I investigate how people make these kinds of decisions in different contexts and tasks.
2017-2020 master’s students
Shannon Garland Duiginan, Jared Pickett, and Kendra Thompson-Davies.
Human Learning Lab 