March 2024:
Madison Fankhanel (left) and Matheson Mah (right) presented their work at the Festival of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (FURCA). Great job, Madison and Matt!
December 2023: The VASP Lab celebrated the end of fall semester with a holiday potluck. Thank you to everyone who attended and shared amazing food (and recipes)! Happy holidays!
August 2023: Congratulations to Helen Ma for doing an excellent job defending her master’s thesis! Helen will be missed in the lab, but we wish her all the best in her future endeavours!
Her thesis has also been published, which you can check out here!
July 2023: Dana, Rafael, and Mae had a great time attending the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS) conference in Guelph, with Rafael and Mae presenting their research posters!
April 2023: Congratulations to both Anjelo Quito and Mae Pacificar for receiving research funding this summer!
Anjelo Quito has received the NSERC USRA to work in the lab for his project “Do eye trust you? Investigating the impact of trust on attention.”
Mae Pacificar has received the UAlberta URI for her VASP Lab project “What catches your eyes? The influence of physical spaces on preferences, attention, and action,” which she is working on with Dr. Craig Chapman (and Dr. Dana Hayward).
March 2023: Alberta Gambling Research Institute (AGRI) Annual meeting! Helen and Ruby presented their work, and enjoyed spending time with Dr. Ben Dyson’s research team. Great work by all!
February 2023: Helen Ma’s paper “How Do Artificial Neural Networks Classify Musical Triads? A Case Study in Eluding Bonini's Paradox” has just been published. Arturo Perez, Helen, Stephanie Zawaduk, and Mike Dawson trained artificial neural networks to classify musical chords, and discuss how it informs musical cognition.
You can check the paper out here.
January 2023: Congratulations to Helen Ma, who received the Margaret Brine Graduate Scholarship! This scholarship is awarded to graduate students with academic excellence and who embody the values of the Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW).
Pictured is Helen presenting on her research during the CFUW Edmonton’s Academic Awards Fund Annual General Meeting.
December 2022: The VASP Lab had a great time at our holiday potluck! Thank you to everyone who attended and happy holidays!
September 2022: Congratulations to Suha Rehman who was just accepted into the University of Alberta’s Dentistry program!
July 2022: Dana and Ruby attended the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS) in Halifax.
May 2022: Danielle Adedun has been accepted into the MSc Clinical Psychology program at the University of Regina. Way to go Danielle!
We are also pleased to announce that lab alumni Ricky Liu will be starting med school at the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry this fall. We wish you luck!
April 2022: Congratulations to both Mae Pacificar and Arianna Cook for receiving research funding to work in the lab this summer!
Arianna Cook has received the URI Undergraduate Researcher Stipend for her project “An eye for an egg: investigating how an object’s social value impacts visual attention”.
Mae Pacificar has received the NSERC USRA for her project “Home Sweet Home: The role of physical spaces on attention and action,” which she is working on with Ruby Prinsen.
February 2022: Please check out Devon Heath’s WCHRI story feature here. In the article, Devon discusses her experience with the WCHRI summer studentship in the VASP lab, the importance of researching disordered eating, and how this prepared her for the grad school experience. We loved having you Devon!
If you would like to read the article published by Devon, Nimrit Jhinjar, and Dr. Dana Hayward, click here.
August 2021: Great job YanFei and Mel for presenting your poster at the European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP) 2021!
August 2021: Great job Ruby Prinsen for presenting your poster at the European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP) 2021!
March 2021: Great job Helen Ma for presenting your poster “‘Gaming’ the system: Measuring decision making via mouse trajectories during 2-player games using an online platform” at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) Conference 2021!
Staying connected despite the physical distance between us by playing board games together!
November 2020: Pictured here is YanFei Song presenting her poster “Here’s looking at you: Social attention across task goals and settings” at the virtual Psychonomics conference! Great job, YanFei!
November 2020: Pictured here is Helen Ma presenting her poster “Where but not who: Attention to identities and locations in groups” at the Object Perception, Attention, & Memory (OPAM) conference! Great job, Helen!
August 2020: Congratulations to Huda Al-Shamali for being accepted into the MSc. in Psychiatry program at the University of Alberta for Fall 2020! All the best in your future endeavours!
August 2020: Congratulations to Amara Hussain for being accepted into the MSc. in Counselling Psychology program at Yorkville University for Fall 2020! All the best in your future endeavours!
July 2020: Congratulations to Sara for this publishing “Artificial Neural Networks Solve Musical Problems With Fourier Phase Spaces” with Dr. Michael Dawson. Click here to read more.
May 28, 2020: Congratulations to Raman Dhaliwal for being accepted into the MSc. in Psychiatry program here at the University of Alberta. All the best in all your future endeavours!
April 9, 2020: Pictured here is Helen Ha, one of our undergraduate students virtually presenting her poster on social presence at this year's Royce-Harder Pandemic Edition. Click here to see her poster and abstract! Great job, Helen!
Congratulations to both Daniela T. and Helen M. for receiving NSERC USRAs (Undergraduate Student Research Award)!
Daniela will be looking at quantifying distractibility using two methods-word vectors, and applying stereotypically high- versus low-interest categories for those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)- in order to determine predictors of distraction during a visual search task. She will be working with Dr. Alona Fyshe and Dr. Dana Hayward.
Helen will be exploring motion and gaze behaviour between individuals playing cooperative or competitive games. She will be working with Dr. Craig Chapman and Dr. Dana Hayward.
A big congratulations to Devon and Dana for their publication which can be found here.
“Does everyone pay attention to people in the same way?" aims to inform young readers ages 8-14 about the study area of research that we do here in the VASP lab. In this article we explore why attention is important in our everyday lives and how social attention can vary across individuals. We also highlight how people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) typically prioritize social stimuli in a different way than those without ASD. The way we compare those with and without ASD is by using the autism spectrum quotient questionnaire (AQ) and we measure differences between the number of autistic-like traits between people. Generally, those with ASD or with a high number of autistic-like traits pay attention to social stimuli the same way. The purpose of this article was to try to condense foundational papers in this research area into a short article that can be understood by young scientists and the general public alike.
December 2019: The VASP Lab had a great time at our annual holiday potluck and gift exchange! Thank you to everyone who attended and happy holidays!
November 2019: Dr.Hayward and a few lab members piloting their first electroencephalography (EEG) session! Great job, everyone!
November 2019: Devon was selected to give a talk at the Women and Children Health Research Institute (WCHRI) Research Day. Great job, Devon!
September 2019: A warm welcome back to pre-existing lab members and welcome to the 14 new members!
June 2019: Devon’s convocation.
Congratulations Devon, you should be very proud of yourself!
Even though you’ve officially graduated, I’m glad you’ll be continuing in the lab for the rest of 2019.
August 2019: It’s official! Dana has been awarded with a New Investigator award for work she did at McGill University with Effie Pereira (co first author), Ross Otto, and Jelena Ristic. https://www.apadivisions.org/division-3/awards/investigator?tab=3. She presented work looking at social reward at the APA annual convention in August.
CSBBCS (June 2019): This year, Dana had the opportunity to present a poster exploring how mood induction and depression history can modulate attention.
VSS Conference (May 2019): At VSS this year, Dana presented a poster exploring what (item) and where (location) information in visual short-term memory.
April 2019: End-of-year potluck (and yes, there was food, although it’s not pictured here)!!
Thanks for a great year, everyone!
Royce-Harder 2019 Conference (April 2019)
Kaitlynn, Nimrit and Sara all did a great job presenting both a Blitz talk and a poster about their Honours thesis projects!
December 2018 - Holiday end-of-term potluck. We were having so much fun, we almost forgot to get a picture! Thanks to everyone in the lab for a great semester of meetings, data collection, and making Interest Areas for our video clip (so much work!). We missed you at the potluck, Don.
Good luck on your exams, everyone, and see you in the New Year!
September 2018. The lab got an Eyelink 1000 Plus, and celebrated with a 2-day training session! Thanks to SR Research for an informative session.
