Researcher Highlight
Our researcher highlights showcase a researcher or team of researchers to provide examples of some of the exciting research we conduct in the Psychology Department. Below is an archive of these researcher highlights, starting in November 2009.
Feb 07, 2012
Elena Nicoladis has published several articles on gesture and language development in bilingual and monolingual children. Her SSHRC/NSERC funded research challenges views about the symbolic nature of gestures and how bilinguals represent information in language. Her finding that children assume gestures mean actions rather than objects challenges the view that children treat gestures and words as equally symbolic and may explain why they have difficulty interpreting number gestures. (more)Nov 30, 2010
Roger A. Dixon was awarded a 7-year renewal (2010-2017) of the Canada Research Chair. His federally endowed Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Cognition and Aging comes with a $1.4 million grant. Roger conducts interdisciplinary research on neurocognitive and biomedical aspects of normal aging, cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer's disease. (more) Aug 30, 2010
Chris Sturdy has recently been appointed to two editorial positions: Co-Editor of Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews and Associate Editor of Frontiers in Comparative Psychology. He was also recently elected as the member at large for the Comparative Cognition Society. Chris leads a thriving multidisciplinary research program in Songbird BioCognition. (more)Apr 22, 2010
Nancy Galambos was recently awarded a Faculty of Arts Research Award for outstanding contributions to research. She was featured in "Ask the Expert" in the Faculty of Arts alumni magazine "Work of Arts" (Spring 2010, p. 16-17). Nancy's work concerns health and well-being in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Recent work in her lab investigated the quality and quantity of sleep in University of Alberta students, and how sleep is related to stress and mood, social behaviours, and academic performance. (more)Feb 02, 2010
Pete Hurd and Adam Reddon have published several papers on lateralization of cerebral function in fish. They discovered that strength of hemispheric preference is related to personality traits like aggressiveness and this relationship is opposite in males and females. Their current work suggests a similar relationship holds in humans and the habenula provides a possible neural substrate. (more)Dec 08, 2009
An article published earlier this year by Christina Gagné and Thomas Spalding appeared in ScienceDirect’s Top 25 Psychology Articles. The research is part of an on-going project to determine how relational information is stored in the conceptual system and how such information influences the way people understand and use concepts. (more)Nov 04, 2009
Weimin Mou received a CFI Leaders Opportunity Grant to support his work in Spatial Cognition in Virtual Environments. His lab employs advanced motion tracking systems using dynamic 3D environments to support investigations into the acquisition, organization, utilization and revision of knowledge about spatial environments. (more)