In order to achieve the goals of the Association, the BAPS organises several activities:

• The annual meeting
• Two awards: Best thesis award and the Annual Meeting Poster Award
• The General Assembly

BAPS coordinates the organization of an annual scientific meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to provide a platform for presenting current research conducted in Belgian universities as well as state of the art reviews in areas of interest to members by means of invited plenary sessions. The different Belgian universities each organise in turn the annual meeting. The latest meetings were hosted by:

• 1991: Université Libre de Bruxelles
• 1992: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
• 1993: RijksUniversiteit Gent
• 1994: Université de Liège
• 1995: Université Catholique de Louvain
• 1996: Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• 1997: Royal Academy - Université Libre de Bruxelles
• 1998: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
• 1999: Universiteit Gent
• 2000: Université de Liège
• 2001: Université Catholique de Louvain
• 2002: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in cooperation with EPS
• 2003: Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• 2004: Université Libre de Bruxelles
• 2005: Universiteit Gent
• 2006: Université de Liège
• 2007: Université catholique de Louvain (Site)
• 2008: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (website) and (programme)
• 2009: Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• 2010: Université Libre de Bruxelles (website)
• 2011: Universiteit Gent (website)
• 2012: Université de Liège (joint meeting with the Spanish society of experimental psychology-SEPEX) (website)

Since 2003, BAPS annually sponsors a prize for the best poster presented during the Annual Meeting. The purpose of the award is to foster creative poster design, to reward effective poster presentations, and to recognize the importance of poster presentations during the Annual Meeting. Posters are judged by a panel of three members of the executive committee. The winner is announced before the start of the General Assembly. Currently, BAPS offers a prize to the 3 best posters. The prize winners receive 150 euros and one year free affiliation to BAPS.

Rules and conditions

Conditions

To be considered for the prize, a poster should fulfil the following conditions:

• The poster must be presented during the poster session of the Annual Meeting of the Belgian Association for Psychological Sciences
• The first author of the poster should be a BAPSmember (or have applied to become member before the Annual Meeting is held).
• The first author cannot be a student of any of the three judges
• The poster cannot be authored by any of the three judges

Procedure and selection criteria

Posters in any domain of psychology will be considered by a panel of three judges appointed by the executive committee of BAPS. As part of the first round of selection, submitted poster abstracts will be assessed according to:

• Soundness of methods
• Importance of the problem for the research domain
• Significance of the results

The posters selected after the first round will then be assessed during the poster session according to the following criteria:

• Clarity with which the problem (hypotheses) is (are) stated
• Identification of important variables and factors
• Clarity of the discussion
• Effective use of graphs and/or tables in presenting the data
• Organization and neatness of the poster
• Accuracy of spelling and grammar

By their participation, the candidates accept the general conditions of the award.

Previous best poster prize winners have been

• 2003: Marie Van Reybroeck (ULB)
• 2004: Olivier Collignon (UCL)
• 2005:
  • Evelien Coppens (KUL): Lateralized affective priming: Stronger priming effects in the left hemisphere
  • Evelien Van Parijs (VUB): Subliminally changing one's personality
  • Inge Zeeuws (VUB): No influence of d-amphetamine on consolidation and abstraction of sequence knowlege in the SRT task
• 2007:
  • Nathalie Vrielynck (UCL): Overgeneral memory and depressive disorder in children
  • Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse (ULg): Using autoreferential stimuli to evaluate eye-tracking in post-comatose patients
  • David Marchiori (ULB): Influence of portion size on food consumption and food estimations
• 2008:
  • Bjorn van Loy (UG): In search of differences in cued task switching with transition and explicit cues: cue interpretation versus task reconfiguration
  • Jonathan Dedonder (UCL): The mere exposure effect depends on the way you look!
  • Ilse van Damme (KUL): False memory i the DRM paradigm: Does the use of personally relevant word lists influence the level of true and false recognition?
• 2009:
  • Serge Walvoort
  • Emily Delespaux (UCL)
  • Marijke Brants (KUL)
    

• 2010:
• Nicolas Michaux (UCL): Selective interference of finger movements with basic arithmetic problem solving
• Critian Buc Calderon (ULB): Unconscious processing of contextual information
• Sophie Galer (ULB): Post-traingin sleep does not favor a binding process in episodic memory
• 2011:
• Elodie Lerens (UCL)
• Gaetane Deliens (ULB)
• Jens Van Lier (KULeuven)

For further information and correspondence, please contact:

Alain Van Hiel, UGent, Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology , FaculteitFaculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, H. Dunantlaan 2 9000 Gent.

BAPS annually sponsors an award for the best master thesis in Psychology. The purpose of the award is to recognize master theses which use a scientific approach and make an original contribution to any field in psychology (clinical, social, cognitive, modelling, developmental, etc.). The winners of the Best Thesis Award receive 1,000 euros.

Eligibility

Candidates must have a Master degree in psychology delivered by a psychology department of a Belgian University. The degree must be obtained in the academic year that precedes the award year (e.g., to enter the 2010 competition, the thesis must have been completed during the 2008-2009 academic year) and the thesis must have been awarded a grade of at least 16/20. Furthermore, candidates must be members of BAPS (or have applied to become a member before the submission deadline).

Procedure

Candidates must submit an electronic abstract of the thesis. The abstract should be written in English and should not exceed 2000 words. Candidates are allowed to include a maximum of 3 tables or figures (these are not included in the word count). The abstract should clearly convey the theoretical basis of the work, the methods, the main results, a discussion of the main findings, and the references cited in the abstract. Up to 3 keywords specifying the domain of the thesis should be provided. Candidates should also clearly state their name, address, telephone number and e-mail, and provide the names of their institution and their supervisor. From 2005 onwards, submissions should be sent to Alain Van Hiel (UG) before November 17th, 17:00h. Reception of the abstracts will be notified within 24 hours. Candidates shortlisted on the basis of the assessment of the abstract will be invited to send five copies of their thesis. Only master theses written in French, Dutch or English are eligible. By their participation, the candidates accept the general conditions of the award.

For further information and correspondence, please contact:

Alain Van Hiel Vakgroep Ontwikkelings-, Persoonlijkheids-, en Sociale Psychologie, Universiteit Gent Henri Dunantlaan 2 B-9000 Gent, BELGIUM.

Year	Name & Affiliation	Thesis title
1996	Walter Schroyens - KUL	Het redeneren over de waarheid of valsheid van beweringen (Meta-propositional reasoning about the truth or falsity of propositions)
1997	Francis Tuerlinckx - KUL	Loglineaire formuleringen van modellen voor itemafhankelijkheden (Modeling local item dependencies in item response theory)
1998	Kristien Dieussaert - KUL	Strategies for dealing with complex deductive problems: combining and dividing
1999	Vincent Goetry - ULB	The role of rhythmic cues for speech segmentation in monolingual and bilingual listeners.
2000	Jan Vanrie - KUL	Viewpoint-dependent versus -independent 3-D object perception: a direct comparison
2001	Wouter Duyck - UGent	What number translation studies can teach us about the lexico-semantic organisation in bilinguals
2002	Timothy Verbeemen - KUL	Determinants of speeded categorization in natural concepts
2003	Stefaan Vandorpe - UGent	The odd-even effect in multiplication: Familiarity with even numbers or a parity rule after all?
2004	Ineke Imbo - UGent	New insights in the role of working memory in carry and borrow operations
2005	--	--
2006	Elodie David - ULB	Change blindness to gradual changes: an exploratory study on facial expressions
2007	Steven Verheyen - KUL	Het leren van hiërarchisch georganiseerde categorieën
2009	Astrid Vermeiren - UGent	Tracking down the asymmetric switch cost: the case of the antisaccades
2010	Kevin D’Ostilio - ULg	Neural correlates of unconscious self-activation and self- inhibition of motor action
2011	Joan Liu - UCL	Gradually revealed properties of general and familiar face processing : an fmRI study