Dr Dirk VAN ROOY

PhD

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Research and Supervision Interests
Current Teaching
Research Students
Selected Publications

My research is mainly focussed on the cognitive processes underlying social cognition and behavior, including group & person perception, social categorization, self-categorization and the formation of socially shared knowledge. My approach to these topics combines traditional, social psychological research with techniques from sociology (social network analysis) and computational modeling (connectionist & multi-agent modeling).  I have also recently developed a socio-cognitive approach to the formation of personal and social identities and collective knowledge structures in general.  I am currently supervising a number of projects in this area, including one that looks at the formation of organizational identity and its impact on the well-being of employees, and the ability of an organization to implement change.  I am also interested in agent-based models to explore how social networks evolve over time and are shaped by the complex interaction between individual and group level factors (individual characteristics, communication, social influence and network structure).  Such simulations can help in exploring how (new) ideas and innovations spread through social collectives, and what role opinion leaders play in this process.

• Coordinator: PSYC2001 ( Social Psychology )
• Coordinator: PSYC3018 (Advanced Research Methods )

 

PhD:

- Andrew Frain

- Teh, Chin (Phd): Group dynamics in the context of non-repetitive, intellectually complex tasks.

Honours:

- Eliza Ng

- Tamara Kerkvliet

- Lin Yang

- Abigail Leung

Previous year:

- Karen Wood (Honours): The effects of personal identity and social identity within a volunteer organisation

- Myra Keating (Honours): Organizational identification and personal well-being.

Publications

• Van Rooy, D. (2009). Modeling dynamic, multi-directional influences in social networks. In B. Anderssen et al. (eds) /18th IMACS World Congress - MODSIM09 International Congress on Modelling and Simulation/, 13-17 July 2009, Cairns, Australia. pp. 74-80. ISBN: 978-0-9758400-7-8.
• Van Rooy, D., Van Overwalle, F., Vanhoomissen, T., Labiouse, C & French, R. (2007). A recurrent connectionist model of group biases. In F. Van Overwalle (Ed.) Social Connectionism: A Reader and Handbook for Simulations.
• Ritter, F., Van Rooy, D. & St. Amant, R. (2006). Providing user models with direct access to computer interfaces: An exploratory study of a simple human-robot interface. IEEE System, Man, and Cybernetics: Part A, Systems and Humans.
• Van Rooy, D. (2005). Modeling socially shared cognition. The Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour Quarterly,issue 119.
• Van Rooy, D., Van Overwalle, F., Vanhoomissen, T., Labiouse, C & French, R. (2003). A recurrent connectionist model of group biases. Psychological Review, 110, 536-563.
• Ritter, F. E., Van Rooy, D., & St. Amant, R (2002). A user modeling design tool for comparing interfaces. In Computer-Aided Design of User Interfaces III, Kluwer Academics Publisher, Dordrecht.
• Van Overwalle, F. & Van Rooy, D. (2001). When more observations are better than less: A connectionist account of the acquisition of causal strength. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31, 155-175.
• Van Overwalle, F. & Van Rooy, D. (2001). How one cause discounts or augments another: A connectionist account of causal competition. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1613-1626.
• Van Overwalle, F., & Van Rooy, D. (1998) A Connectionist Approach to Causal Attribution. In S. J. Read & L. C. Miller (Eds.) Connectionist and PDP models of Social Reasoning and Social Behavior. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Presentations

• The need for cognitive closure and tolerance for ambiguity in groups, at the SPSP Annual Meeting, Memphis, USA, January 2007.
• Modeling the emergence of consensual group structures, at the Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico, USA, January 2006.
• Tolerance and the development of socially shared information. Presentation at the EAESP Annual Meeting, July 2005, Wuerzburg, Germany.
• Cognitive models of user performance in interactive environments, at the Computer Science department of Old Dominion University, Norfolk VA, March 19, 2002.
• A connectionist approach to social cognition², at the Department of Psychology, Penn State University, State College PA, November 7, 2001.