Psychologists from Leeds on menu at inaugural Ilkley Science Festival

Mrs James, headteacher of Ilkley Grammar School, officially opened the Ilkley Science Festival of six talks over two days on Saturday 14th November, 2009. The talks covered a wide range of cutting edge science topics and were enjoyed by over 200 audience members. Psychologists from the Institute gave three of the six talks.

The audience were the first to hear about the very latest findings and were given some sneak previews of some exciting new science results from the University of Leeds.

Marion Hetherington's talk on Chocolate addiction highlighted that we are born to like sweet things but Prof Hetherington described how we learn to like bitter foods including vegetables. She encouraged parents to keep giving their children vegetables because they need to eat them at least ten times before they develop a taste for them!

Catriona Morrison made the audience recall their earliest memory and suggested that our earliest memories date from when we first have the words to describe an event. She discussed research showing that often we don't forget things but can find it hard to retrieve these memories. She showed that smells and music provide powerful prompts to help us remember things from our past.

Mark Mon-Williams gave an overview of how children develop and explained some of the difficulties that children can experience. The audience learned about some recent inventions from the University of Leeds including a device that can identify children with handwriting problems and a robotic system that might help children improve their handwriting. At the end of his lecture he revealed how students can improve their exam performance when he highlighted research showing that exercise can help children concentrate on their work.

Professor Mark Mon-Williams said, "The event was an absolute credit to Ilkley Grammar School and the students and teachers who gave their time to organise it. I'm sure that it will help the school meet its aims of being a leading specialist school in science and the humanities."