Download Current List of Potential Lab Projects

Name of Faculty Supervisor: Dr. B. Gorzalka
Project 1
Title:
The role of endocannabinoids in female sexual behaviour
Number of Students: Two
Project 2
Title:
sexual assault
The effects of racial stereotypes on the perception of
Number of Students: One
Project 3
Title: Cervical Cancer, Acculturation and Sexuality in a
Community Sample (BREB # H06-04073). The purpose of this study is to
understand the factors that affect Pap testing in Chinese and Caucasian
women. Participating in this study will involve interviewing women about
their level of acculturation, health behaviours and various sexuality-related
variables.
Number of Students:
One or two female students
Name of Faculty Supervisor: Stan Floresco ([email protected]); Colin Stopper
Project Title: Examining the role of selective drugs acting on the dopamine reward system in
regulating risk-based decision making.
Number of Students: 1
**Note: If anyone is interested in having a quick tour of the animal colonies and Floresco
lab to see if they would like to do a project with animals, please contact Jen
([email protected]) ASAP to set that up.
Name of Faculty Supervisor: Janet Werker, Contact: Dr. Laurel Fais
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: (604) 822-6408
Project 1: Precursors to pointing. We are coding the movements that 6-month-olds make with
their fingers. We will analyze the results to see what kinds of patterns of movement the infants
show, and if there are any significant differences in the finger movements of infants listening to
language or listening to music.
One student
Project 2: Infants in our looking time studies also make vocalizations. We are investigating the
hypothesis that a type of short vocalization we call a "cough" is an indication of attention. Some
knowledge of phonetics would be useful to work on this project.
One student
Project 3: We have already run two word-learning studies in which 14-month-old infants heard
sounds presented either by a person sitting in the experiment room, or by a person on a video.
We will be comparing the looking time patterns to the person during the experiment, across both
conditions (real and video).
One student
Name of Faculty Supervisor: E. David Klonsky
Email: [email protected]
Project 1 – Title: “Accounting for Mad, Sad, Glad, and Afraid: The Structure of Emotions in
Everyday Life"
The student(s) will help design and run initial studies investigating the structure of emotion (i.e.,
the relationships among negative and positive emotional states such as sad, angry, happy, and
fearful). As this will be a brand new project, the appropriate student will be unusually
motivated, enthusiastic, and able to work independently. In exchange, the student will have the
opportunity to present lab data at an academic/professional conference, and to be included as an
author on the initial publication providing the student(s) follows through in their roles.
One or Two Students
Name of Supervisor: Dr. Alan Kingstone
Email: [email protected]
In the Brain and Attention Research laboratory we are interested in the systematic description of
natural human behavior and the design of controlled experiments to further understand this
behavior. There are many ongoing projects in the lab including studies of how ipods affect the
afety of people when crossing the street, how student fidgeting changes as a function of time in
lectures, how our posture influences our ability to pay attention, how instructors use "umms" and
"ahs" during lectures, how we move our eyes while we walk around campus, and how music
influences the sense of "presence" when playing a video game (e.g., guitar hero). Students
interested in research could get involved in any of these projects. In addition, we are always
looking to entertain novel ideas and start new projects. We are especially interested in original
ideas that include observing behavior in natural contexts.
One or more students
Name of Faculty Supervisor: Mark Schaller
Project 1
Title: Disease salience and conformity. Description: The aim of this
study is to investigate how temporary disease salience influences
people’s tendencies to conform to social pressure.
Number of Students : 1
Project 2
Title: Disease salience and attitudes: Description: the aim of this
study is to investigate how disease salience influences attitudes
towards xenophobia in others, preferences for attractive friends, and
other variables.
Number of Students: 1
Name of Faculty Supervisor: Ara Norenzayan
Project 1: Does thinking about God make religious believers feel like they’re being watched?
There is some evidence that religious primes make people nice in anonymous situations. One
possible explanation for these effects is that the religious primes make people feel like their
behavior is being monitored—that is, it makes the situation non-anonymous—which makes
people act nice. So we’re testing other outcomes that are associated with people feeling watched
somehow.
Number of Students: 3+
Project 2: What is the relationship between autism, theory of mind, and atheism?
Recent cognitive-evolutionary theories of religion all highlight theory of mind as particularly
important for religious cognition. Cross-culturally, gods are described (at least implicitly) as
having human-like mental states, so some adeptness at representing mental states (theory of
mind) is necessary for religious belief. This leads to the prediction that theory of mind
impairments, such as those associated with autism, might lead people to be less religious.
Number of Students: 2
Project 3: What types of information do people remember?
There’s a lot of research in the area currently under the name “Cognitive science of religion” that
looks at how basic biases in human memory could influence the types of folk tales and religious
stories that people are most likely to remember and pass on. In particular, there’s evidence that
people are very good at remembering stories that are mostly intuitive, but contain a few
unexpected violations of our intuitions. These minimally-counterintuitive concepts are also
endemic to religion (think ghosts, spirits, djinn, etc). The present line of research looks at
whether minimally-counterintuitive concepts that are also described as having humanlike mental
states are particularly easy to remember and transmit. This could help explain why cultures
around the world have so many stories that deal with supernatural critters that think and act
basically like superpowered humans.
Number of Students: 1
Name of Faculty Supervisor:
Liisa Galea
Project 1 Title : Effects of reproductive experience (motherhood) on
hippocampus and prefrontal cortex-dependent memory.
Number of Students 1 or 2
Project 2
Title:
Validating an animal model of postpartum depression
Number of Students 1
Project 3
Title Examining the effects of different estrogens on
hippocampus-dependent memory
Number of Students 1 or 2
Name of Faculty Supervisor: Ann Cameron
Project 1 Title: East meets West: Cross-cultural study of the development of honesty and verbal
deception
We examine Chinese and Canadian children’s understanding and moral judgements of lying and
truth telling, when the value of honesty collides with another value such as modesty or loyalty.
Working in our Lab would provide an opportunity for a student to gain experience learning the
research process which will include: Library searches; Preparing stimuli; Training in ethical
standards working with human participants; Collecting data with school-aged children; Entering
& coding data and then of course; Data analysis for 366.
Number of Students: One or two.