If you were wandering through Vari Hall last Wednesday afternoon, you could have stopped and chatted with fourth-year psychology students about some pretty esoteric subjects.

The rotunda was a maze of posters featuring the thesis projects of 78 students ready to explain whether eating disturbances are symptoms of depression, how to measure prejudice, the relationship between exercise and forgiveness, how sound affects perception of space. Their research projects, supervised by faculty members, spanned all areas of psychology – cognitive, social, developmental, quantitative, history and theory, neuroscience, and clinical.

The end-of-year event has become so big that the Department of Psychology moved it to Vari Hall last year from the crowded halls of the Behavioural Science Building.

The poster projects are worth five per cent of students’ final mark and judged by roving graduate students based on clarity, design and the students’ ability to explain their research in a comprehensive manner. Many will go on to present their research at a variety of national and international conferences.

“Whether you are speaking to your supervisor, other professors or fellow students, it is important to know how to present and communicate your results to different audiences,” says psychology Professor Susan Murtha, who has organized the event for the past three years.

And the students who go on to graduate studies will have to defend their research to external examiners who don’t know much about their field. “It is really important to be able to understand how to communicate.”

Left: Poster winners Angela Deotto (top) and Lilly Solomon. Photos by Brett Thompson

By 4pm, judges had selected two who did it best: Angela Deotto (supervised by Christine Till) for her poster "Mathematical impairment in pediatric-onset multiple sclerosis: Relationship with white matter integrity"; and Lilly Solomon (supervised by Jennifer Steeves) for her poster "MS to the ‘occipital face area’ affects face recognition but not categorization". They won $50 gift certificates to the 91��ɫ Bookstore.

Both Steeves and Till are members of the .

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Over time, regularly speaking more than one language appears to strengthen skills that boost the brain’s so-called cognitive reserve, a capacity to work even when stressed or damaged. This build-up of cognitive reserve appears to help bilingual people as they age.

“Speaking two languages isn’t going to do anything to dodge the bullet” of getting Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, says Ellen Bialystok, Distinguished Research Professor in Psychology in 91��ɫ’s . But greater cognitive reserve means the “same as the reserve tank in a car: Once the brain runs out of fuel, it can go a little farther,” she says.

Specifically, the advantages of bilingualism are thought to be related to a brain function known as inhibitory or cognitive control: the ability to stop paying attention to one thing and focus on something else, says Bialystok. Fluent speakers of more than one language have to use this skill continually to silence one language in their minds while communicating in another.

. . .

Dr. Bialystok began her decades-long research by studying how children learn a second language. In 2004, she and her colleague Fergus Craik shifted to conduct three studies looking at the cognitive effects in some 150 monolingual and bilingual people between 30 and 80 years old.

They found that in both middle and old age, the bilingual subjects were better able to block out distracting information than the single-language speakers in a series of computerized tests. The advantage was even more pronounced in the older subjects.

Dr. Bialystok says other research also shows better performance from bilingual people on tests requiring cognitive control, such as when they are instructed to determine whether a sentence is grammatically correct, even if the content doesn't make sense.

For example, in distinguishing, "apples grow on trees" from "apple trees on grow" and "apples grow on noses," the third sentence requires people to focus on the structure and suppress paying attention to the meaning of the words.

The findings from the 2004 study led Dr. Bialystok to wonder whether these benefits might help older people compensate for age-related losses in learning.

She and her colleagues examined the medical records of 228 memory-clinic patients who had been diagnosed with different kinds of dementia, two-thirds with Alzheimer's disease.

The results, published in the journal in 2007, suggested that bilingual patients exhibit problematic memory problems later than those who only spoke one language.

Bilingual patients were, on average, four years older than single-language speakers when their families first noticed memory problems, or when the patient first came to the clinic seeking treatment.

Moreover, bilingual patients' memories were no worse than those of single-language speakers by the time they arrived at the clinic, and there was no difference in the length of time between the detection of symptoms and when the patients were first checked in.

In a subsequent study, Dr. Bialystok and her colleagues looked at brain images of monolingual and bilingual Alzheimer's patients at the same age and stage of disease.

They found that the brains of the bilingual people appeared to be in worse physical condition. This suggests that bilingualism doesn't delay the disease process itself, but rather helps bilingual individuals better handle memory deficits, Dr. Bialystok says.

. . .

Dr. Bialystok's group is now conducting a study testing patients every six months to measure the rate of mental decline over the course of dementia.

Bialystok's research was also covered by the Oct. 12.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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What she’s found is that intelligence as measured by IQ tests is not the same as rationality or a rationality quotient (RQ). “There’s a folk idea that being smart in the IQ sense translates to being smart in the rational decision-making sense, but they’re not that related,” says Toplak. “It’s time for IQ to move over and make room for RQ.”

Left: Maggie Toplak

What that means is that although someone’s IQ may be high, their RQ may be rather low and if that’s the case, they are more likely to be irrational in their behaviour and decision-making capacity. That explains why some people who appear to be quite bright can make astonishingly silly decisions.

The problem with IQ tests, says Toplak, is that they don’t measure all of someone’s intelligence or mental ability. They don’t assess rational thought and that's because rational thought can’t be measured through timed performance tests the way IQ can. “Intelligence and executive functions are one component, but there are many others,” she says. “We’ve found that IQ tests are unrelated or only modestly related to measures of rational thinking.” Rationality shouldn’t be left out of the equation as it is key to whether people make choices that lead to happiness and fulfillment or possible misery.

When it comes to RQ, there are two main types – getting what you want most and finding truth in the world. Someone with a high RQ could be doing just fine, whereas someone with a high IQ may wonder why their decisions aren’t leading to happiness and life satisfaction.

Below: Steve Paikin, host of TVO's "The Agenda", interviews 91��ɫ Professor Maggie Toplak about her research on rational quotient, or RQ

People with low RQs are often cognitive misers, meaning that they take the easy way out when trying to solve problems, often leading to solutions that are illogical and wrong. Mindware gaps are another type of cognitive failure. It's when people lack the specific knowledge, rules and strategies needed to make rational choices. Another category of cognitive failure is called contaminated mindware – for example, belief in luck and superstition can lead people astray, such as pathological gamblers, she says.

What Toplak finds so exciting about this research is that if decision-making measures are unrelated to IQ and executive functions, then there are novel possibilities for training people to be better decision makers. “One of the big motivations for me is the taxonomy of types of cognitive errors and failures that people can make. We may find some areas that are more amenable to training than others. Some of the exciting directions of this work are to apply it to special populations, such as pathological gamblers, people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or youth offenders.” Many individuals with these difficulties have trouble creating goals for themselves. Assessment and training in the domain of rational thinking has been given little or no consideration in these special populations, and offers promising directions for training and intervention.

The research is showing that their level of IQ or executive functions has little to do with their ability to make rational decisions. Often in pathological gamblers and in individuals with ADHD, it’s their decisions and goal-making capacity that are causing problems. “In our most recent work, we are examining this in a sample of young offender adolescents with my graduate student, Geoff Sorge. I think the domain of rational thinking will help us quantify the difficulties that some of these individuals experience, and this will be very important from a training and treatment perspective.” This is an area that people really haven’t paid much attention to in the past.

In another study, Toplak and colleagues reviewed 43 studies that had explicitly examined the relationship between performance and cognitive abilities on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which is used to study decision-making differences. What they found was that “the majority of studies reported a non-significant relationship…between decision-making on the IGT and cognitive abilities, which is consistent with recent conceptualizations that differentiate rationality from intelligence,” as Toplak and colleagues wrote in the April 2010 issue of Clinical Psychology Review.

In conjunction with other researchers, including Stanovich who wrote the book , Toplak and her colleagues are in the process of creating a taxonomy to understand why some people are better decision makers using a series of tasks to test RQ. And she and her colleagues have found that people with high IQs only do better than people with average IQs on RQ tests when they are told they have to use their rational thinking skills to solve them.

“Rational thinking is a really big construct with several components. We're carving out an area that people really haven't paid enough attention to," says Toplak. “We know that rational thinking predicts real-world outcomes.”

Toplak’s research on reasoning and decision making has been funded by the and she is collaborating on this work with psychology Professor , who has held a Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and psychology Professor of James Madison University.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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During a recent conversation with 91��ɫ President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri, the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, David Onley (Hon. LLD '09), expressed an interest in the research initiative. In response, Shoukri invited Onley to tour the facility and speak with researchers. On July 15, the lieutenant governor paid an informal visit to the University to hear first-hand from MEHRI researchers and therapists about their research into early childhood development.

Above: From left, MEHRI neuroscientist Jim Stieben; President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri; 91��ɫ Distinguished Research Professor Stuart Shanker, director of MEHRI; Rhonda Lenton, associate vice-president academic; Devin Casenhiser, MEHRI head of research; David Onley, the lieutenant governor of Ontario; MEHRI therapist Christine Robinson; Professor Lesley Beagrie, associate dean of professional & global programs in the Faculty of Health; Amanda Binns, MEHRI speech language pathologist; Alicia Allison, MEHRI community liason officer; Fay McGill, MEHRI speech language pathologist and floor-time therapist; Ana Bojcun, MEHRI budget & administrative officer; and Eunice Lee, MEHRI social worker

During his visit, Onley listened to remarks from the University's president and Stuart Shanker, 91��ɫ Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology & Philosophy and the director of MEHRI. He then heard from MEHRI therapists and researchers about their work before taking a tour of the research facility.

Also present at the event were Rhonda Lenton, associate vice-president academic, and Professor Leslie Beagrie, associate dean of professional & global programs in the Faculty of Health.

“I believe that 91��ɫ performs a very important and critical function in supporting postsecondary education, not only through the training of students but also through research," said Shoukri in his opening remarks.

"This particular initiative is very close to my heart. The Milton & Ethel Harris Research Initiative is led by its director, 91��ɫ Distinguished Research Professor Stuart Shanker. One of the exciting aspects of this initiative is its focus on child development," Shoukri said. "From all that I have seen so far, there is clear evidence that this initiative is on its way to having a significant national and international impact."

Following the president's comments, Shanker offered a brief history of MEHRI, including the role of the late Canadian philanthropist Milton Harris, whose support made the research initiative possible, (see YFile, June 23, 2005).

Right: Stuart Shanker

"We were very interested in a program called the Developmental Individual-Difference, Relationship-Based Model (DIR) for very specific reasons," said Shanker. "It focuses on the child’s core capacities. So that rather than trying to treat a symptom, you are trying to develop those underlying capacities that are constricted."

Conceived by the late Dr. Stanley Greenspan (Hon. LLD '06), a clinical professor of psychiatry, behavioural science and pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School and a practising child psychiatrist, DIR is a social interaction-based approach for treating children with autistic spectrum disorders. DIR engages children through play to expand their world and help develop their ideas and relationships and is at the heart of the extended study now underway at MEHRI. Shanker said the research will have an impact on the treatment of all children experiencing challenges and will play a role in enhancing the capacities of children developing typically.

"Suppose I had a child who was experiencing difficulty in learning how to read. Rather than doing intensive exercises to get the child to read, we would look at what are the underlying causes. Is there a problem with visual perception or motor control?" he said. "In addition to doing reading exercises, with DIR we would work very hard on strengthening the weakened capacities that are causing the deficits and rather than just treating the symptoms."

DIR is wedded to science, said Shanker, and at MEHRI, scientists and therapists are partners in the research underway into children's core capacities. "I saw this as a model for the 21st century, a framework for really enhancing early childhood development, because we would continually be revising and developing what we are doing," said Shanker.

"DIR also operates through the parent. The parent becomes the primary agent in the child’s development. What we have been seeing is that there has been a remarkable effect on family dyanmics. Families are being empowered by DIR," he said. "This is a program about understanding, for any child, why they may be having certain problems and what are the causes and then helping that child to develop a better ability to stay calm and focused.

"Milt Harris was very insistent that he wanted this initiative to inform public policy, so MEHRI has also been working very hard with the premier’s special adviser on early learning []," said Shanker. "MEHRI has played a role in seeing these ideas embedded in the core of the early learning program that is being rolled out in Ontario."

Lenton echoed Shanker's comments and reiterated that she was very pleased to see that the work underway at MEHRI, in addition to helping children with autism, would have benefits related to a general approach to early childhood development.

Onley then heard from MEHRI therapists Christine Robinson, Amanda Binns, Sonia Khan and Eunice Lee. The group spoke about their work with children with autism and showed before-and-after video clips that displayed the accomplishments experienced by a child after just a few weeks in floor-time therapy.

MEHRI researchers and offered a summary of their latest research to Onley. Their work examines the behavioural and neurological effects of a DIR-based treatment on young children with autism spectrum disorders. The two researchers previewed the results of their research to the lieutenant governor. The MEHRI researchers explained how they hope the results of their work will expand the range of options available in the treatment of all children through the use of DIR.

"This is remarkable," said Onley. "Thank you all very much, your research is most fascinating. The reality of autism is significant. I hear regularly from parents who express their deep concerns about autism. Please keep up the good work and I look forward to keeping in touch and following your research."

At the conclusion of the presentations, the lieutenant governor and Shoukri toured the MEHRI facility.

More about David Onley, the lieutenant governor of Ontario

In 2007, Onley was the first person with a physical disability – he had polio at the age of three – to become a lieutenant governor. Before stepping into the role, he had a 22-year career as a broadcaster for Citytv and was the first senior newscaster with a visible disability.

For many years, he has championed disability issues as chair of the Government of Ontario’s Accessibility Standards Advisory Council and as an accessibility council member for the Rogers Centre and the Air Canada Centre. Onley has used his influence to highlight and help remove barriers to employment and housing for Ontario's 1.5 million people with disabilities.

On Friday, June 26, 2009, 91��ɫ honoured Onley with an honorary degree in recognition of his work in advancing disability rights in Canada.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology Ellen Bialystok, of 91��ɫ's , is one of five scholars to be awarded this year’s Killam Prize in recognition of her work, which has focused on language acquisition and how bilingualism affects brain development.

Bialystok talked to The Globe and Mail about the dynamics of research, how some ideas have to find their time, and her future projects.

Q: How significant is it as a researcher to receive a $100,000 prize? That seems like a lot of money.

A: As a research prize it is enormous. It really is unprecedented in academia to give such a large prize for a body of work. It doesn’t have any restrictions on it. I can use it as I decide to. I haven’t given that much thought. I have a very active lab. We are in the middle of between 15 and 20 different projects.

Q: How do you decide as a researcher what area you will examine next? How much of it is intuition?

A: Research moves forward in teeny-weeny steps and then sometimes at the end of a very long journey that could last 10, 20, 30 years, these steps produce something that seems to be incredible. You look at that last step and say, “Wow, that’s amazing.” You forget about all the steps that led up to it. This is the real art of research, knowing how to stay on the path and follow the evolution of an idea through all of its twists and turns. When we look at a research finding as a breakthrough, for the person who found it, it is anything but a breakthrough. It is years of tedious small steps.

Q: Is there a finding that you have made that you would put in that category?

A: In some sense all of them.

Q: What about the link you found between bilingualism and warding off the effects of Alzheimer’s?

The research on dementia was a real flyer. We had done work on bilingual children and adults. We thought the chances of it working were small, but we got very powerful results.

I’d been doing research for a long time and it wasn’t particularly noticed. At some point we began to change our ideas about the mind – that the mind really does reflect new learning into adulthood. So it became more interesting to think that an experience like bilingualism could have an effect. I had been saying these things for a long time, and quite honestly nobody believed it. Now we understand that the mind is much more flexible than we thought.

Q: What are the next questions you are thinking about?

We have to start seriously tackling “how come?” We know very little about the why. The other thing we are looking at is the process.

We have always looked at bilingual people versus monolingual people. Now we are looking at people in the process of becoming bilingual. How bilingual do you need to be to see benefits?

The is available on the Globe's Web site. Their coverage also featured a and an :

Unlike some other major scholarly awards, the Killam Prize recognizes the career contributions of scholars, rather than a single discovery or piece of research. Ellen Bialystok, one of this year’s five winners, is a psychologist best known for her work in language, bilingualism and cognitive development. Here are three areas of her work that gained widespread attention:

Video gaming and the brain: In one study that gained wide media attention, Bialystok examined how a group of undergraduates performed on tricky mental tasks. The gamers in the group were faster and better – and those who were also bilingual were unbeatable.

Bilingualism and dementia: Bialystok was the principal investigator in a study that discovered fluency in two or more languages may stave off cognitive decline because of the mental agility needed to juggle them. The link was far stronger than suspected, and the finding has since been replicated by other researchers.

Bilingualism as a brain boost: Her most widely cited work is a breakthrough study conducted in 2004 that showed bilingual adults had a cognitive advantage over subjects who were fluent in only one language. The study found that edge lasted well into adulthood.

, and also covered the story.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Bialystok, a Distinguished Research Professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, is known internationally for her research on language, bilingualism and cognitive development. She received the award April 13 from the , which administers the .

The clip is and runs for approximately seven minutes.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of 91��ɫ's Media Relations Department.

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Bialystok, a Distinguished Research Professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, is known internationally for her research on language, bilingualism and cognitive development. She received the award this morning from the , which administers the .

One of the most important research prizes in the world, the $100,000 Killam Prize is annually awarded to five eminent Canadian scholars for their distinction in health sciences, engineering, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. Bialystok was recognized for her work in the social sciences category.

Right: Ellen Biaylstok

The first in her field to research claims of cognitive deficits in bilingual children, Bialystok discovered that bilingual children and adults have distinct advantages over unilingual people when completing both linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks. Her research is now revealing that this advantage continues for bilingual people as they age.

She has also been recognized by the international linguistics community for her body of work on theories of language processing and on practical issues related to foreign and second language education.

“The Killam Prize recognizes Professor Bialystok’s groundbreaking contributions to psychology and confirms the international excellence of her achievements,” said 91��ɫ President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri. “Her success contributes to the growing national and international leadership of 91��ɫ’s faculty in health related-research as they respond to medical, social, and environmental challenges facing Canadians and people around the world.”

Bialystok was awarded a in 2001. She is a . In November, she received the 91��ɫ in recognition of her research contributions.

"Ellen is a remarkable researcher who is so deserving of the Killam Prize," said Stan Shapson, vice-president, research & innovation. "Her work is cited all over the world. She has also received funding from all three of Canada's national funding bodies − the , the and the − at various points in her career, along with funding from the ."

Bialystok has developed new methodologies for studying the role of cognitive processes on second language learning as well as the impact that knowing a second language has on cognitive aging.

“By studying people of all ages, and using both behavioural and neuroimaging approaches, Professor Bialystok is changing our understanding of language acquisition and literacy, as well as cognition and aging," said Faculty of Health Dean Harvey Skinnner. "Her research, and the collaborative research of many other faculty researching developmental and cognitive processes, reflects the Faculty's goals of innovative research that helps keep more people healthier, longer."

Bialystok has recently published research on how bilingualism boosts children’s focus. She has also researched how bilingualism can delay the onset of dementia.

By Janice Walls, media relations coordinator.

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91��ɫ psychology Professor Shayna Rosenbaum has been awarded a 2010 Sloan Research Fellowship, which she says will help take her work on episodic memory to a new level, not otherwise possible at this early stage in her career.

“The award provides me and my students with the flexibility to continue a line of research that might be considered to fall slightly beyond the boundaries of traditional memory research,” says Rosenbaum.

“The primary focus of my research has been on the nature and function of episodic memory and its relationship to other types of memory. It has implications for other aspects of cognition, such as future planning, decision-making and inferring other people’s mental experiences, that are not normally considered to be part of memory, and which I hope to study along with my students.”

Left: Shayna Rosenbaum

Rosenbaum studies three general types of memory – episodic, semantic and spatial – and how they relate to one another. Episodic memory, the ability to re-experience the details of personal life events, is the type Rosenbaum has focused on most recently, particularly how neural damage affects it. Semantic memory is knowledge about the world that is not tied to any one event, and spatial memory helps people find their way in any given environment.

Rosenbaum takes an innovative approach to memory research by combining neuroimaging methods, like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), with neuropsychological testing of patients who have damage to the medial temporal lobes and prefrontal cortex. In this way, she is able to investigate how memory for personal experiences and the experiences of other people are organized in the brain, how such representations break down following neurological disease and how other aspects of cognition are affected by their loss.

“It’s an examination of questions that are of interest to those studying neuroscience as well as evolutionary theory, human development, behavioural economics, clinical populations and general issues relating to human nature and consciousness,” says Rosenbaum.

She was one of 118 outstanding early career scientists, mathematicians and economists selected for a Sloan Research Fellowship by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The winners are faculty members at 56 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada who are conducting research at the frontiers of physics, chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics and neuroscience.

“The Sloan Research Fellowship is meaningful in that an international body of scientists, both within and outside the field of neuroscience, has recognized that research aiming to better understand memory and how it is organized in the brain might be both clinically and theoretically important,” says Rosenbaum, who teaches in 91��ɫ’s Department of Psychology in the and the Neuroscience Graduate Diploma Program. She has also been an associate scientist at the at since 2005.

Her work is supported by the , the and a New Investigator Award from the .

The Sloan Research Fellowships have been awarded since 1955, initially in only three scientific fields – physics, chemistry and mathematics. Since then, 38 Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win the in their fields.

Grants of $50,000 for a two-year period are administered by each Fellow’s institution. Once chosen, Sloan Research Fellows are free to pursue whatever lines of inquiry are of most interest to them and they are permitted to employ Fellowship funds in a wide variety of ways to further their research aims.

For more information, visit the Web site or 91��ɫ’s Cognitive Neuroscience Lab Web site.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit grant-making institution that supports original research and broad-based education in neuroscience, technology, engineering, mathematics and economic performance.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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, a psychology PhD candidate in the Faculty of Health at 91��ɫ's Centre for Infancy Studies, describe her research, which was conducted under the direction of Professor Maria Legerstee and published in the Journal Infancy. The clip runs approximately 10 minutes.

Edited by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer.

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A study by 91��ɫ researchers reveals that infants as young as six months old know when we’re “playing” them – and they don’t like it.

Researchers in 91��ɫ’s examined six- and nine-month-old babies’ reactions to a game in which an experimenter was either unable or unwilling to share a toy. Babies detected and calmly accepted when an experimenter was unable to share for reasons beyond her control, but averted their gazes and became agitated when it was clear she simply wouldn’t share.

“Babies can tell if you’re teasing or being manipulative, and they let you know it,” says study lead author Heidi Marsh, a PhD student who worked under the direction of psychology Professor , head of the Centre for Infancy Studies in 91��ɫ’s .

“These results are exciting as it’s the first demonstration that used infants’ social behaviour to successfully show that at six months they comprehend the goals of our actions. Previously, there was only evidence based on visual habituation (observing the pattern of infants’ gazes towards stimuli) which is prone to interpretative issues, and even those results were very mixed,” Marsh says.

Other studies have concluded that this ability doesn’t develop until nine months of age. However, that research used measures which Marsh proposes are unsuited to younger infants.

“A six-month-old as compared to a nine-month-old has different ways of expressing what they know,” says Marsh. “The innovative aspect of this research is that we used measures that are consistent with a six-month-old’s everyday behaviour in order to understand what they comprehend. We recorded their social responses, such as sadness, gaze aversions, smiles and vocalizations, in addition to more physical responses such as reaching and banging,” she says.

The study looked at 40 infants, evenly divided between genders. Infants sat in their mothers’ laps at a table, with the experimenter seated across from them. In half the test trials, the toy was not passed to the infant because the experimenter was unwilling to share it, and in the others, it was not passed because the experimenter was trying, but unable, to pass it.

Infants were administered three tasks: block, mock and play. Each task differed with respect to the toy that was shared and the nature of the sharing game, but in all tasks there was a corresponding unwilling and unable condition. For instance, in the mock task, a rattle was held out toward the infant and then pulled back teasingly (unwilling condition), and a ball was "accidentally" dropped and rolled back to the experimenter (unable condition).

The visible movements of both the experimenter and the toy were matched across conditions, as was the outcome that the toy was not shared. This meant that the main difference between conditions was the experimenter’s intent.

“We also used the experimenter’s facial expressions to convey unwillingness or inability, as they’re important cues for babies to understand others’ goals,” says Marsh.

Infants at both ages averted their gazes during unwilling trials. They also reached more in the unable conditions, suggesting they understood there was a problem and were trying to elicit the adult’s assistance. The nine-month-olds banged their arms in the unwilling conditions, whereas the six-month-olds showed more negative affect, such as frowns, in those trials, and positive affective behaviours in unable conditions.

“Our finding that affective measures are stronger for younger infants may be related to their level of independence,” Marsh says. “As infants become more independent, they decrease affective behaviour such as crying, and increase physical actions such as actively resisting. These distinctions point to the importance of studying infants’ social and cognitive abilities not only over time, but also in paradigms that capture the spectrum of their social behaviours.”

The study, “”, is co-authored by Legerstee, Jennifer Stavropoulos and Tom Nienhuis. It was published online in in January 2010.

This research was supported by grants from the .

By Melissa Hughes, Media Relations Officer.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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