A team from the Faculty of Psychology UGM, in collaboration with the Indonesian Family Advocacy Institute (LAKI), is delivering a collaborative parenting education program in the form of an interactive workshop to strengthen family resilience. The initiative emphasizes caregiving that aligns with children’s emotional needs and developmental stages, while equipping parents with practical, easy-to-apply parenting principles. This program is funded by the 2025 Community Service Grant (Hibah PkM) of the Faculty of Psychology UGM.

The Faculty of Psychology UGM, through the Center for Life-Span Development (CLSD), in collaboration with RSUP Dr. Sardjito, has initiated a community engagement program that focuses on strengthening parents’ capacity to support children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The program develops an educational toolkit titled “Parental Support Toolkit: Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorder in Children and Adolescents” designed to be accessible, practical, and evidence-based. By emphasizing parental attunement—the ability of parents to understand and respond sensitively and synchronously to their child’s signals—the program aims to help families stimulate children’s social skills in everyday contexts.

The Center of Life-Span Development (CLSD), Faculty of Psychology UGM, is developing environmental-themed storybooks for early childhood as a community empowerment initiative to strengthen literacy and foster eco-friendly habits from an early age. The program builds on insights from The Reading Buddies (TRB) initiative, which shows that children aged 4–6 are highly responsive to interactive stories, yet access to reading materials specifically addressing waste management and environmental themes remains limited.

A research team from the Center for Life-Span Development (CLSD), Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), is initiating a qualitative study to understand how Indonesian adolescents define mental health, the challenges they face, and the protective and risk factors that shape their psychological well-being. National data indicate that 34.9% of adolescents experienced mental health problems in the past 12 months, yet only 2.6% have accessed services. In response, this study seeks to foreground adolescents’ own voices to ensure that resulting interventions genuinely align with their lived experiences. This research is funded by the 2025 UGM Faculty of Psychology Research Grant.

The Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Gadjah Mada, through the Mental, Neural, and Behavior expertise group, is organizing a community empowerment program in the form of training on brain imaging analysis using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for students. This initiative is designed to bridge the growing need for neuroimaging competencies in modern psychological research while expanding interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly with medicine and radiology.

A research team from the UGM Faculty of Psychology will investigate factors that contribute to everyday cognitive failures, ranging from forgetfulness and divided attention to simple errors that can escalate into safety risks, by combining an updated self-report questionnaire with a series of mental chronometry–based cognitive tasks. This initiative places objective, standardized measurement at the core of understanding how different components of cognitive functioning work together and, at times, fail, thereby opening opportunities for more targeted interventions to support psychological well-being and daily performance.

Amid the growing role of social media in shaping public opinion, a new study from the Faculty of Psychology at Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) examines how political conversations in digital spaces influence young people’s emotions and political engagement. Drawing on the dynamics of discourse on platforms like TikTok—from sympathetic support to aggressive commentary, the research seeks to understand users’ response patterns to political conversations of differing tones and characteristics. This study is funded by the 2025 Research Grant of the Faculty of Psychology UGM and is situated within the Cyberpsychology theme at the Center for Indigenous and Cultural Psychology (CICP).

A research team from the Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), is examining how Common Method Bias (CMB) affects findings in survey research. CMB refers to bias that arises when the same measurement approach is used for multiple constructs at the same time, for example, administering many questions to the same respondents, at the same time and place, using the same form. As a result, correlations between concepts can appear higher than they truly are, with part of the “high” value coming from the measurement method rather than the actual phenomenon. Internationally, many journals now require authors to demonstrate efforts to reduce CMB. In Indonesia, however, reporting and mitigation of CMB are still uncommon, highlighting the need for trusted guidance.

A research team from the UGM Faculty of Psychology will examine how intensive Qur’an memorization training shapes verbal memory and leaves measurable traces in brain structure and connectivity. Grounded in the structured pedagogy of Islamic boarding schools, combining talaqqi, muraja’ah, and consistent repetition, this study positions hafiz as a model of learning that demands high perseverance and repeated information processing. In neuroscience, intensive learning experiences are known to trigger neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to adapt both functionally and structurally. However, specific evidence of how these adaptations manifest in hafiz remains limited. This study aims to map brain regions relevant to verbal memory, particularly the hippocampus and caudate nucleus, assess the integrity of white-matter tracts such as the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF) and uncinate fasciculus (UF), and concurrently evaluate behavioral performance in verbal memory. Additionally, this study is the first psychology research in Indonesia on mapping the brains of hafiz using structural brain imaging.

The Career Center of the Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), held a blended-format webinar titled “Learning Effectively and Growing as a College Student” on Friday (October 3). The event, attended by first- and third-semester undergraduate students, featured two inspiring speakers: Nadia Puti Dianesti, S.Psi. (Alumna and 2024 Outstanding Student of the Faculty and University) and Alya Nur Faiza (2025 Outstanding Student of the Faculty of Psychology UGM).