Rate My Professor Bethanie Gouldthorp

Bethanie Gouldthorp serves as a lecturer in the School of Psychology and Exercise Science at Murdoch University, where she has held an academic appointment, lecturing in psychology and supervising postgraduate research. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy at Murdoch University with the thesis titled 'Hemispheric Contributions to Language Comprehension: Word and Message-level Processing Mechanisms of the Right Cerebral Hemisphere,' under the supervision of Jeffrey Coney. Her academic background includes extensive involvement in cognitive psychology research, focusing on hemispheric differences in language processing, reading comprehension, particularly in children, situation model construction, and contextual information integration during sentence comprehension. Gouldthorp's research employs methods such as electroencephalography (EEG), event-related potentials (ERP), and lexical decision tasks to investigate right hemisphere contributions to meaning attribution and perceptual integration in language.

Gouldthorp has supervised multiple doctoral and honours theses at Murdoch University, including works on working memory and reading comprehension (J. Taylor, 2017), the effects of gestures and pictures on word acquisition (G.B.C. Chan, 2014), increasing physical activity levels in primary school children (C. Price, 2015), executive functioning in cannabis users (K. Highet, 2015), and top-down modulation in task learning (R. Cooper, 2014). Her key publications encompass 'An ERP study of hemispheric differences in perceptual representations of language reveals meaning attribution in the right hemisphere and constituents of the N400-effect' (2021, co-authored with A.G. Male), 'A randomized controlled trial examining the impact of individual trauma-focused therapy for individuals receiving group treatment for depression' (2021, co-authored with S. Dominguez et al.), 'An Investigation of the Role of Sequencing in Children's Reading Comprehension' (2018), 'Positioning the reader: the effect of narrative point-of-view and familiarity of experience on situation model construction' (2016, co-authored with M. Mulcahy), 'Online Academic-Integrity Mastery Training May Improve Students' Awareness of, and Attitudes Toward, Plagiarism' (2013, co-authored with G.J. Curtis et al.), 'Message-level processing of contextual information in the right cerebral hemisphere' (2009), and 'The sensitivity of the right hemisphere to contextual information in sentences' (2009). These contributions, cited over 170 times, have advanced understanding of cognitive mechanisms in language and reading. She also co-authored a Cochrane review protocol on EEG neurofeedback for executive functions in children with neurodevelopmental challenges (2017).