Children Archives - News@91��ɫ

Priming for planned sex increases desire, frequency in parents with young children, 91��ɫ study finds

egamulin — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:00:21 +0000

TORONTO, Dec. 1 2025 — Between the lack of sleep and free time, physical, hormonal and relationship changes, and juggling work and other life commitments, many couples find their sex lives take a hit in the transition to parenthood. Continuing through the early years of child rearing, this can have a negative impact on the overall relationship. While spontaneous sex is put on a pedestal in Western society, led by researchers at 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health found that encouraging couples with young children to plan sex led to increased desire and frequency.

91��ɫ PhD Candidate and registered psychotherapist Katarina Kovacevic

“F��ǳ� previous research we know that most people idealize spontaneous sex, but that doesn’t necessarily correlate with actual sexual satisfaction,” says lead author and 91��ɫ PhD Candidate Katarina Kovacevic, a registered psychotherapist whose clinical and research focus is on romantic relationships and sexual issues. “For this study, we wanted to see if we could shift people's beliefs about planning sex so they could see the benefits, which they did.”

For the paper, “Can Shifting Beliefs About Planned Sex Lead to Engaging in More Frequent Sex and Higher Desire and Satisfaction? An Experimental Study of Parents with Young Children,” published in The Journal of Sex Research, Kovacevic worked closely with 91��ɫ Psychology Professor , also director of the at 91��ɫ.

The researchers recruited more than 500 participating individuals from Canada, the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand, whose youngest child was five years old or younger. The study was open to all gender and sexual orientations.

Psychology Professor Amy Muise

All participants were surveyed on their pre-existing notions of planned versus spontaneous sex and were then divided into two groups. One was given a research summary highlighting the importance of planned sex and were encouraged to plan sex with their partner in the next two weeks. The other group was given literature saying that researchers were not sure whether planned or spontaneous sex was more satisfying and were instructed to have sex as they normally would with their partner.

“At the two-week followup, people in the experimental group reported having more planned sex than the control group and more sex overall,” says Muise. “The difference between groups meant that planning sex could translate into at least one more sexual experience a month for a couple, which can be meaningful.”

Planning also had other benefits. The researchers found, for participants who had reported at least one sexual encounter in the two-week period, that the planners felt less obligated to have sex compared to the control group.

“In the manipulation, we emphasized that planning sex needs to be a conversation with your partner, we emphasized consent, so that could perhaps explain that finding,” says Kovacevic.

The researchers say that while parents with younger children are at an especially vulnerable stage in their sex lives and relationship overall, they believe planning could be beneficial to many couples.

“This could apply fairly broadly — for example to people who are busy in general, to people who have health and mobility issues who have times when they feel better and worse,” says Kovacevic. “Planned sex could be a tool for anyone looking to connect more with their partner.”

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91��ɫ is a modern, multi-campus, urban university located in Toronto, Ontario. Backed by a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners, we bring a uniquely global perspective to help solve societal challenges, drive positive change, and prepare our students for success. 91��ɫ's fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario's Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education. 91��ɫ’s campuses in Costa Rica and India offer students exceptional transnational learning opportunities and innovative programs. Together, we can make things right for our communities, our planet, and our future.

Media Contact:

Emina Gamulin, 91��ɫ Media Relations, 437-217-6362, egamulin@yorku.ca

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Study provides insight on medical attention sought by children from lower socio-economic backgrounds

egamulin — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 18:37:49 +0000

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The real threat to gender-diverse children is the politicization of care issues like puberty blockers and detransition

suhasini — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 21:24:12 +0000

Under the pretext of protecting children, Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, has to the use of puberty blockers for gender-diverse children.

“I think that we should protect children and their ability to make adult decisions when they’re adults,” Poilievre said.

Poilievre is one among many politicians to wade into debates surrounding gender-affirming health care in recent years. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has , including prohibiting puberty blockers for children aged 15 and under.

But the growth of politicization and misinformation on this issue — on top of already over the — probably pose a bigger threat to gender-diverse people than puberty blockers.

who study the and gender-diverse people who have accessed gender-affirming health care. and also a parent. And who also research — the process of discontinuing or reversing a gender transition.

We both personally know countless people who have been helped by transitioning, as well as others who were that can have .

We have noticed that what is presented as “fact” in these debates has distorted real complexities of gender-affirming health care, creating a rift between conservative and progressive information outlets. The result has left many in the dark about what is really at stake. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre speaks to the media about puberty blockers and trans children.

Fertility and gender-affirming medicine

Take the New 91��ɫ Times as an example. Two opinion columnists recently wrote about gender-affirming care for minors, making drastically different remarks about the fertility implications of this care.

Opinion columnist asserted that it is a “mistaken belief” that infertility routinely results from treatments for gender-diverse children, while , writing about detransition, claimed that hormonal therapy causes “often irreversible” infertility.

But the reality of fertility and gender-affirming treatments is in the details. Research on fertility outcomes is lackluster to begin with, but outcomes are highly sensitive to whether .

For children who start puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones without ever undergoing natal puberty, because reproductive maturity is not achieved, and saving sperm or eggs for the future is with current assisted reproductive technologies. However, for transgender people who begin cross-sex hormones after undergoing at least some natal puberty, fertility does not seem to be permanently affected.

indicates that for those who went through natal puberty, taking cross-sex hormones alone is .

Puberty blockers

The history of transgender medicine and reproductive rights has been fraught with injustice. When puberty blockers , transgender adults were being coercively sterilized. In 2014, the Netherlands struck down a policy requiring .

Pediatric gender medicine is a , and while the it also .

In fact, fertility is not the only issue at stake with puberty blockers. There are uncertain , as well as — issues clinicians and researchers are paying close attention to.

A team of Dutch clinicians who were among the first to offer transgender children puberty blockers that these drugs may not be just a “pause button” to explore identity, as originally intended. Instead, they should be thought of as the first step of a medical gender transition, because a .

But there are also major , which could hurt transgender girls more than boys. Testosterone’s effects on the body can be difficult to reverse, so undergoing a masculinizing puberty could render transfeminine kids more . Irreversible body changes from puberty can not only heighten distress and reduce social acceptance, but also contribute to a need for future surgeries.

Given that puberty may occur as early as for some children, this is a high-stakes medical decision never taken lightly by families or clinicians. by saying that “we should protect the rights of parents to make their own decision with regards to their children,” because, given the age of the child, parents are typically involved in the decision to start puberty blockers.

However, there is — in either direction.

Detransition debate

Puberty-blocking drugs are not the only politicized topic in gender-affirming health care. .

On one side, opponents of gender-affirming care distort studies to argue detransition has and draw from testimonies of regretful detransitioners as a “.”

Proponents retort by dismissing detransition either by alluding to its and , or by .

As a result, the public is exposed to two different sets of “facts,” none of which reflect the heterogeneity that we and others have encountered in — different for detransitioning; a range of emotions including ; expansive patterns of . All of it must be studied for gender-related medical care to continue being evidence-informed.

But threats, or outright restrictions, from politicians will not advance this care. What is badly needed from governments is investments in higher quality research and systems of care so treatments can be accessed in the safest possible terms. There are currently gaps in the affecting access, quality, and safety.

Guidelines, dilemmas and the need for high-quality research

This area of health care already developed through a review of the evidence and . But that does not mean the science is settled or that the medicine has no room for improvement.

Gender-affirming care is riddled that have . The changing landscape of transgender health care, and are all low-hanging fruit for opportunistic politicians like Poilievre.

On the polarization of these topics, anthropologist and medical doctor — who — wrote:

“It is tempting to take the opposite position of one’s enemy, by defending all medical interventions currently associated with gender transition in children and insisting that they are safe and save children’s lives.”

But by not being able to tolerate some of the unknowns, or banning treatments outright, we miss a crucial opportunity to advance knowledge that is needed to help gender-diverse children and their families.

Debate should not centre on whether to ban blockers, but on how to build a high-quality health and social care system that can support all gender-diverse people. Doing so depends on our collective ability to tolerate complexity.

As published in the

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Anti-Black bias can persist despite kids’ tendency to favour same-gender peers

egamulin — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 16:01:10 +0000

91��ɫ researcher says talking to children about race and racism in age-appropriate ways can help combat biases

TORONTO, Feb 1 2023 — Children as young as five can display more positive associations with white children over Black children on measures of unconscious bias and this can be true even when taking into consideration kids’ tendencies to favour same-gender peers. Taking an own-gender lens does, however, increase positive associations towards Black children, pointing to both the persistence of anti-Black racism, but also its contextual nature.

“I think for many Black parents this would not be a surprising finding, given their own lived experience,” says lead author Jennifer Steele, psychology professor with 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health. “Racism continues to persist in our society and children are picking up on that. What it also points to is kids looking at race through a lens that can come in and out of focus, depending on what they are paying attention to.”

Steele has studied racial bias since she was a graduate student at Harvard and has led multiple studies on children’s implicit biases around race at 91��ɫ as director of the University’s . While she acknowledges that it can be uncomfortable to think of young children as displaying racial bias, she says it can be useful to acknowledge and discuss issues of racism on the path to tackling them.

Professor Jennifer Steele

“We like to believe that children are innocent beings that are naive to many of the realities in the world, and at times they are. But simultaneously, they're watching the way the world works and they are picking up on things that adults transmit, sometimes unintentionally. So, in some ways it’s surprising, in some ways it’s not that surprising that they start to show racial biases from quite early in development.”

For the study, recently published in the American Psychological Association’s Developmental Psychology, more than 200 non-Black children were recruited to complete an Implicit Association Test used to measure unconscious bias. Children were shown pictures of Black children, who they did not know and who were their same gender, and pictures of white children who were not their gender. That is, girls saw Black girls and white boys, while boys saw Black boys and white girls. Steele and her research partner found that the level of bias depended largely on how children thought about the faces.

When the girls were asked to think of the Black girls as girls, their positive associations increased relative to white boys, but when asked to think of the Black girls as Black, they favoured the white boys. The boys in the study showed the same pattern of own-gender favouritism when they were asked to think about Black boys and white girls as boys and girls. But racial bias was still found when these same faces were seen through the lens of race.

These findings suggest that racial bias can persist, but can also come in and out of focus, making it sometimes harder to consistently identify. While not explored in this particular study, Steele says that one important way for parents and educators to work on reducing bias, is through representation and having age-appropriate conversations about race.

“It is important for children to see many examples of the diversity of amazing people, from all walks of life, who contribute positively to our society,” she says.

About 91��ɫ

91��ɫ is a modern, multi-campus, urban university located in Toronto, Ontario. Backed by a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners, we bring a uniquely global perspective to help solve societal challenges, drive positive change, and prepare our students for success. 91��ɫ’s fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario’s Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education. 91��ɫ’s campuses in Costa Rica and India offer students exceptional transnational learning opportunities and innovative programs. Together, we can make things right for our communities, our planet, and our future.

Media Contacts: Emina Gamulin, 91��ɫ Media Relations and External Communications, 437-217-6362, egamulin@yorku.ca

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Kids are surprisingly adultlike in their memory recall, 91��ɫ research shows

egamulin — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 15:00:44 +0000

TORONTO, Jan. 27 2023 – Planning a trip to the zoo this weekend? Why is it that after a visit, a four-year-old might remember seeing a lion, a tiger, and a bear, while a 10-year-old might also recall seeing a giraffe, a kangaroo, a pygmy hippo, a Komodo dragon, a ring-tailed lemur, and maybe even a West African dwarf crocodile? shows that while older kids have a superior memory, children as young as four show evidence of the sophisticated technique known as ‘temporal clustering,’ when recalling information.

“We often underestimate what children are capable of,” says from the Faculty of Health and Director of . “Our study — looking at kids not in a research lab, but out ‘in the wild’ — shows these universal memory properties are established at a very early age.”

The study’s authors, who also included 91��ɫ PhD students Lina Deker and Mark Christopher Adkins, and 91��ɫ undergraduate student Puneet Kaur Parmar, looked at children who took part in a week-long summer camp at the Toronto Zoo – a deliberate choice for Pathman, who has previously conducted research at various science centres and museums. “When we can get out into the world and capture real-life events to answer our research question, it helps to bolster what we're finding and make it more ecologically valid,” Pathman explains.

The children were on set schedules for visiting different exhibits, so the researchers knew which animals the kids saw when. The kids were divided into groups of four- to five-year-olds (defined as being in early childhood), six- to seven-year-olds (middle childhood) and eight- to 10-year-olds (late childhood). At the end of the week, the children were asked one simple question: ‘can you tell me all the animals you saw this week?’

“We were interested in how many animals children of different ages recalled. We found the expected pattern that older children recalled more animals than younger children. But we were especially interested in the order of their recall. Were children showing temporal clustering? And we found that they were.”

Temporal clustering — the idea that people remember things in groupings based on the timing of those experiences – is a well-documented process in adults. Pathman and her team have discovered that children as young as four search for memories using this same process.

“If a child’s recall response was ‘ostrich, gorilla,’ those would be animals that they saw in different spatial and temporal contexts. That is not an example of temporal clustering. But if the child said ‘ostrich, zebra’ — these animals were experienced together, so the response would show temporal clustering.”

Creating memories in space and time relies on a part of the brain called the hippocampus. Pathman says current research suggests this part of the brain continues to develop later into childhood than previously thought.

This study supports earlier findings by Pathman and others suggesting there is a jump in memory around age seven or eight and older kids do not display much difference in their memory processes compared to adults – especially when that memory is tested in a more naturalistic environment like a trip to the zoo, rather than a lab setting.

“I think a lot of attention has been paid to infancy, and the emergence of memory, but there's something that's happening in middle-to-late childhood that's really fascinating.”

About 91��ɫ

91��ɫ is a modern, multi-campus, urban university located in Toronto, Ontario. Backed by a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners, we bring a uniquely global perspective to help solve societal challenges, drive positive change, and prepare our students for success. 91��ɫ’s fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario’s Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education. 91��ɫ’s campuses in Costa Rica and India offer students exceptional transnational learning opportunities and innovative programs. Together, we can make things right for our communities, our planet, and our future.

Media Contacts: Emina Gamulin, 91��ɫ Media Relations and External Communications, 437-217-6362, egamulin@yorku.ca

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Pain research finds what you say in the first minute after a vaccine��can be key in reducing a child's future distress

roshanp — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 12:30:12 +0000

New study finds it’s not just what say, but when you say it that can keep preschoolers calmer during vaccinations

TORONTO, July 13, 2021��– As we look forward to a fall with hopefully one of the most important vaccination uptakes of children in a generation, a new study provides insights to help parents with reducing post-vaccination distress in younger kids. The study,��published in , looked at preschool children who were at least four-to-five years old and what their parents said that could help reduce distress during their vaccination. This study is part of the largest study in the world looking at caregivers and children during vaccinations from birth to the age of five — coined the OUCH Cohort.��The OUCH Cohort originally followed 760��caregiver-child dyads from three pediatric clinics in the��Greater Toronto Area��and were observed during vaccinations during the first five years of a child’s life.

“What we found is that in the first minute after the needle, the more parents said coping-promoting statements, such as ‘you can do this’ and ‘it will be over soon’ or tried to distract them with talking about something else, the higher distressed the children were. This really surprised us,” said Rebecca��Pillai��Riddell, senior author, professor in the department of psychology, Faculty of Health and Director at the OUCH Lab at 91��ɫ. “We found however, during the second minute after the vaccine, when the child was calmer, these same coping promoting statements resulted in them calming down faster. On the other hand, distress-promoting statements, such as criticizing the child, or reassuring them they were fine, had no relationship with child distress in minute-one but and in minute-two, the distress-promoting comments were strongly predictive of higher distress in kids. We also showed with preschoolers that the more distressed they were prior to the needle, the more distressed they were after the needle — like a domino effect of previous pain.”

“Previous research has shown that the vast majority of preschoolers calm down within two minutes after a vaccination, however, about 25 per cent of children did not. We wanted to determine what parents were saying before or during the vaccination appointment that could be leading to these children feeling distressed during and after a vaccination,” said Ilana Shiff, first author and master’s student in Pillai Riddell’s lab.

Based on their findings, the researchers recommend that in first minute after a vaccine parents��should not��start encouraging coping right away, but rather keep them calm by using physical��strategies��such as hugging, cuddling or hand-holding. This should be done instead of��trying to give a child verbal direction on how to cope when they are in peak distress. Once children get over that initial minute of high distress,��Pillai Riddell says, they think children are more able to get benefit from parents’ coping-promoting statements.��The findings also provide insight for��health-care��providers and caregivers on how to support children during immunization appointments.

Researchers say because preschool children show the prior pain ‘domino-effect,’ it is critical for health-care providers to try to vaccinate calm preschoolers. Routinely adopting techniques that allow the child to be approached without distressing them prior to the needle (e.g., allowing a child to stay close to their caregiver while viewing a video on a smartphone as a distraction) will help minimize the pain ‘domino��effect’ these findings suggest. Moreover, for both groups, supporting caregivers to avoid��distress-promoting��behaviours��before and during��the vaccination will be critical.

“This type of data has never been found in preschoolers before.��It’s important to understand post-needle reactions at this age because needle phobia and phobias in general start coming on at five to 10 years of age, so understanding how children can be coached and how parents can have a really powerful role in reducing stress post a vaccination is key,” said Pillai Riddell.

About 91��ɫ

91��ɫ��is a modern, multi-campus, urban university located in Toronto, Ontario. Backed by a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners, we bring a uniquely global perspective to help solve societal challenges, drive positive change and prepare our students for success. 91��ɫ's fully bilingual Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario's Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education. 91��ɫ’s campuses in Costa Rica and India offer students exceptional transnational learning opportunities and innovative programs. Together, we can make things right for our communities, our planet, and our future.

Media contact:��Anjum Nayyar, 91��ɫ Media Relations, cell 437 242 1547,��anayyar@yorku.ca

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Study shows why younger children remember details but struggle with order of events

roshanp — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 13:33:42 +0000

Findings add to knowledge of children’s eyewitness testimony

TORONTO, March 17, 2021��–��Children between four and five years old find it more difficult to remember time and the sequence of events than older children, a study by psychology researchers at 91��ɫ shows. This is expected to be a particularly important finding as more children could be asked to testify about what happened inside their homes during the pandemic.

“Did I see John before or after I went to the park?” “Who came into my room first?” Researchers say children aged eight to 10 years old can answer these types of questions with better accuracy than younger children.

In cases of child maltreatment and abuse, children are often the only witnesses, other than the accused. That is why thousands of children participate in forensic interviews or testify in courts every year.

“There are��reports that COVID-related lockdowns and school closures have resulted in more cases of maltreatment and abuse.��So around the world we expect an increase in future court cases, and an increase in the number of children that are interviewed or asked to testify about events that happened inside the home during the pandemic,” says senior author Thanujeni (Jeni) Pathman, assistant professor, Department of Psychology at 91��ɫ. “It’s possible there will be even more need to rely on the testimony of child eyewitnesses, so understanding what children can remember and��report, including when past events occurred, is important.”

The study looked at��how well children remember the order that past events occurred, to better understand why younger children have a more difficult time being accurate compared to older kids or adults. Previous research has found that there are drastic improvements in how well children remember past events across childhood, but the development of temporal memory − memory for ‘when’− is especially slow to develop.�� Researchers wanted to know why this is so.

In the study, 127 children took part in a week-long summer camp in 2018 at the Toronto Zoo where they experienced unique and fun events each day, including visits to particular animal exhibits.�� Children were in three age groups: four to five-year-olds, six to seven-year-olds, and eight to 10-year-olds. Researchers tested the children’s memory for the order of events they experienced across the week with questions like, “Which did you do first, visit the polar bear or the giraffe?”

The study found that the two older age groups remembered the order of the zoo events.�� Six to seven-year-olds were not as accurate as the eight to 10-year-olds, but both groups were accurate overall. This is in contrast to the youngest children, in the four- to five-year-old group, who were not accurate about order or timing of events – even though they remembered many other details about events from the zoo.��In order to determine the precise mental processes that children may be using to help them answer the question, researchers varied the time between the events in the question.�� For some questions, the two events happened close in time, making it more difficult, and for other events the two events were farther apart, making it less difficult.

“When adults do tasks like these, they show a boost in memory when the two events are farther apart, pinpointing a particular type of process used to explain how adults remember time.�� We found that only the oldest age group showed this boost which means that only they were benefiting from the use of this particular process that adults use.”

Researchers say these results help explain why there are age-related improvements and why memory for time shows continued improvements so late in development.

The final version of this study is published online in the journal�� today.

��

Media Contact:��

Anjum Nayyar, 91��ɫ Media Relations, cell 437 242 1547,��anayyar@yorku.ca

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91��ɫ U’s OUCH lab pain study links children’s fear of needles to parent behaviour

roshanp — Wed, 18 May 2016 13:32:24 +0000

TORONTO, May 18, 2016 – More than half of children are scared of needles; 91��ɫ researchers have found a strong connection between this fear in anticipation of a jab and their parents’ behaviour during infant vaccinations.

Psychology Professor Rebecca Pillai Riddell’s lab investigated factors contributing to the anxiety that preschoolers experience in anticipation of pain when getting their vaccines. The pain study found that past and continuing behaviour of the parent was the biggest reason for this suffering.

“We observed how these children behaved before their needles and after their needles when they were infants and preschoolers,” says Pillai Riddell. “We also observed how parents interacted with their children, and the types of things they said to their children during infancy and at the preschool age.”

For some children, the fear of needles and vaccinations before getting the shot is so severe that they experience more pain-related distress right after the needle and also learn to avoid future medical procedures and appointments.

The researchers, including Pillai Riddell, Professor David Flora and lead author PhD candidate Nicole Racine, observed 202 parents in the Greater Toronto Area and 130 children between four and five years of age – these children were among the 760 who were followed at the first wave at two, four, six and/or 12-month immunizations.

The goal of this final wave is to link the regulation of pain to mental health outcomes, according to the researchers at the Opportunities to Understand Childhood Hurt (or OUCH as it is commonly known) lab.

The study to find out what leads to children developing needle fear, titled “Predicting preschool pain-related anticipatory distress: the relative contribution of longitudinal and concurrent factors,” is being published in the journal Pain this fall.

“We were interested in whether pain-responding and parent behavior during infancy predicted needle fear at preschool,” says Pillai Riddell.

Parents were also asked about how scared they were before the needle, and how scared they thought their child was.

Health-care professionals were also observed prior to children receiving needles.

“This is a major public health concern and stresses the importance of understanding what leads to needle fear in young children and how we can prevent it,” says Racine.

These findings highlight the importance of developing interventions to help parents to best support and coach their children during painful medical procedures right from their first needles as a baby.

NOTE: The study is available for interested media upon request.

is known for championing new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Our 52,000 students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Meaningful and sometimes unexpected careers result from cross-discipline programming, innovative course design and diverse experiential learning opportunities. 91��ɫ students and graduates push limits, achieve goals and find solutions to the world’s most pressing social challenges, empowered by a strong community that opens minds. 91��ɫ U is an internationally recognized research university – our 11 faculties and 24 research centres have partnerships with 200+ leading universities worldwide.

Media Contact:
Gloria Suhasini, 91��ɫ Media Relations, 416 736 2100 ext. 22094, suhasini@yorku.ca

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Children, youth take longer to fully recover from concussion: 91��ɫ U study

roshanp — Mon, 16 May 2016 19:10:39 +0000

TORONTO, May 16, 2016 – 91��ɫ concussion experts report that children and youth take longer to fully recover from a concussion than previously thought.

After a concussion, young athletes usually rejoin their teams in a few weeks if they do not have any active symptoms. However, it might take up to two years to fully recover from the injury before they can play as skillfully as their teammates with no history of concussion, according Professor Lauren Sergio in the Faculty of Health.

“Performing motor tasks, guided by what we see, is crucial in skill-based activities such as sports,” says Sergio. “But the current return to sport assessment doesn’t test to see if the injured person has regained this ability. Because of this often children and youth who have had a concussion end up returning to normal activities before they are fully recovered. We believe this makes them more vulnerable to another concussion.”

The findings indicate that those in the age group of eight and 16 are not only vulnerable to concussions, but because their brain is still developing, they are neurologically more fragile than adults for performing tasks that require cognitive motor integration following a concussion.

The latest research at Sergio’s lab studied the prolonged difficulty in cognitive-motor integration in 50 children and adolescents with a history of concussion. Their performance was compared with 49 who have never had a concussion.

Participants in both the groups were asked to perform two different tasks on a dual-touchscreen laptop. In one task target location and motor action were aligned. In the other task that tested cognitive-motor integration, the required movement was not aligned with the guiding visual target and required simultaneous thinking for successful performance.

“We noticed significant difficulty in completing the tasks among those with concussion history,” says Marc Dalecki, postdoctoral candidate and lead author. “In fact, it took many of the children two years after the concussion to have a similar performance on the task as children who did not have a history of concussion.”

The study, “," published in Future Science journal, .

Media Contact:
Gloria Suhasini, 91��ɫ Media Relations, 416 736 2100 ext. 22094, suhasini@yorku.ca

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