York psychology Professor Shayna Rosenbaum is the 2014 recipient of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS) Early Career Award for her research on learning and memory in patients with memory impairment.

The CSBBCS Early Career Award recognizes the exceptional quality and importance of a new researcher’s contributions to knowledge in brain, behaviour and cognitive science in Canada. It was first awarded in 2011.

“It is truly an honour to receive this recognition from colleagues within my field of study. This award recognizes research that my students and I have conducted with healthy adults and memory-impaired patients to better understand how memory is organized in the brain and how different types of memories change when normal brain function is disrupted,” says Rosenbaum of York’s Faculty of Health.

Rosenbaum and colleagues have studied one of the most severe cases of episodic amnesia on record and found that the individual still understands the concept of time and “can orient himself with respect to his personal past and future.” He is also able to make decisions about his future despite difficulties imagining specific future events. The article “Individuals with episodic amnesia are not stuck in time” was published online in the journal Neuropsychologia on March 26.

Rosenbaum is also lead author on the article “Case studies continue to illuminate the cognitive neuroscience of memory,” published in May in the Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, which looks at the importance of studying single and multiple patient cases. These cases are responsible for much of what is known about brain-behaviour relationships, she says.

Much of her research is focused on memory and learning. “We are continuing to combine fMRI and sensitive cognitive paradigms to help specify the function of the hippocampal memory system, which is known for its role in memory,” says Rosenbaum.

“Recent research in my lab is identifying the extent to which the hippocampus is needed for other abilities, such as semantic learning, decision making and social abilities. We are harnessing this knowledge to develop strategies to help healthy adult and clinical populations manage in the face of memory loss and optimize learning in the workplace.”

Her most recent research – with former York grad student Janet Green, current graduate student Tina Weston and York psychology Professor Melody Wiseheart – on the spacing effect as “an effective and clinically meaningful memory intervention technique” is forthcoming in the American Psychological Association journal Neuropsychology.

Other neuroimaging and patient studies conducted in her lab have shown that, contrary to conventional views, the hippocampus is needed for supporting some aspects of remote spatial memory.

Rosenbaum has published more than 40 papers, including articles in Science, Nature Neuroscience and the Journal of Neuroscience. She previously received the Canadian Association for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award.

More information about Rosenbaum and her research can be found on her Cognitive Neuroscience Lab website.

When boys first start bodychecking in hockey, they find the freedom to hit other players without repercussions fun and exciting, a York University study has found.

As one study participant said, “I like to hit and not get into trouble. If I just feel like hitting someone then you can just go out and hit, and you can’t really do that anywhere else.” Some of the other boys said they felt a “rush of excitement” when bodychecking, and “I kind of like hitting. It’s kind of fun.”

The study of 11- and 12-year-old boys in peewee hockey looks at the transition of going from non-contact to bodychecking in hockey, through a psychological and social lens. It comes during a time of intense debate about the appropriate age to allow bodychecking in ice hockey. Starting this fall, none of the peewee teams will be allowed to bodycheck; that will only be allowed starting at the Bantam level – age 13.

“Bodychecking is a clearly defined skill within the context of the game, but many participants talked instead about ‘hitting’ – with intent to harm. Some kids talked about using bodychecking to intimidate, gain power and take out their frustrations, while others spoke about their fears and anxieties of being hurt. We found these findings very interesting, because when you think about it, in any other context, we would call this bullying,” says Professor Jessica Fraser-Thomas of York University’s School of Kinesiology and Health Science in the Faculty of Health.

The study, “I like that you can hit a guy and not really get in trouble”: Young Ice Hockey Players’ Experiences with Body Checking,” was published in the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. It looked at boys from nine competitive teams in three southern Ontario leagues.

It also revealed a disconnect. Although the young hockey players found it exhilarating to whack their opponents, when a player was seriously injured as a result, many felt true remorse. It’s as if the hitting and causing injury isn’t connecting in their brains.

“When asked about the introduction of bodychecking, the first thing they talked about was the increase in injuries. They were scared, shocked and upset by these injuries. It was fascinating how they expressed such empathy for injured players – crying seeing a kid taken off on a stretcher – then turned around immediately to talk about how much they enjoy hitting people,” says Fraser-Thomas.

“Like every game there’s at least one or two [injuries]. . . . If there’s a guy going for the puck, they’re going to hurt the kid usually,” said one participant.

But it’s more than just the young players not connecting the dots; their coaches and parents aren’t either, says Fraser-Thomas. “The control and intimidation, much of that message is coming from the parents.” They are advocating and coaching the kids to “hit” the other players. They are advised to use their body size, if they are physically bigger, to their advantage. And at that age, there is a significant difference of body sizes.

“There is a certain language that goes with sport – and specifically hockey: ‘You’ve got to take control of the game, you’ve got to use your body – use it to your advantage’ – that language is very common,” she says.

And the kids are responding. They report enjoying the feeling of power that comes with intimidating their opponents and taking control of the situation. They are also finding slamming some guy into the boards a release for their anger and frustration and that raises red flags for Fraser-Thomas.

“There is a large body of research on body checking from a physical aspect – and concerns about injuries – but we have really not even scratched the surface from a psychosocial perspective, which I think is really relevant in this culture where there is concern about aggression and bullying,” she says.

Fraser-Thomas thinks more training for coaches and parents so they can better guide young hockey players could be part of the answer. Positive youth development through sports can only happen in the right context.

Alongside the 2013 rule change regarding the increased age for bodychecking introduction, there was also a recommendation that a working group would be formed to develop an instructional resource program to support progressive implementation of checking skills.

“I don’t think bodychecking per se is problematic. But the messages that kids are getting around bodychecking may be problematic – to ‘hit’, to take control, to use their body to their advantage – these can come off as messages of aggression and intimidation,” she says.

Bodychecking needs to be taught within the context of positive development, moral education and appropriate social norms, says Fraser-Thomas. This did happen, but maybe not enough. “A few of the study participants talked about this. They outlined how they would be watching an NHL game and observe a ‘dirty’ hit, and their Dad would turn it into a teachable moment about respecting your opponent,” she says.

“Coaches and parents have an obligation to help shape kids’ understanding of what body checking is and should be used for – to separate the player from the puck. It shouldn’t be okay to use bodychecking as an outlet for anger and frustrations. Parents and coaches also need to help young children make the connection between a ‘dirty’ check and potential harm to another player.”

By Sandra McLean, YFile deputy editor

By three months of age, infants are visually able to locate objects that stand out from a group, such as a red umbrella in a sea of grey ones, a York University study has found.

Although this form of visual attention is present in adults, it was unknown how early it developed in infants. In the study, led by York University psychology Professor Scott Adler, the latency of eye movements in both infants and adults were measured in hundreds of milliseconds when presented with certain visual search tasks.

It was found that infants, like adults, were able to pick out a single R character among increasingly larger groups of P characters. The R is considered to have a distinguishing, unique feature that stands out.

“This indicates that infants at a very young age are able to selectively extract information from the environment in a similar manner as adults,” says Adler.

That means they are just as adept at locating specific stimuli among competing and distracting stimuli in their environment. In addition, the infants showed a similar an asymmetrical pattern of detection to locate the unique target as the adults. The study also looked at what happened when infants and adults were given a “feature-absent” target among distracting “feature-present” objects, such as a P among varying sized groups of Rs. In this case, the infants were less efficient at finding the differing letter without a distinguishing feature.

“This is what’s called ‘bottom-up’ attention,” says Adler. “That’s because it’s coming from the environment and going up into the processing system. Top-down attention is where your goals, ideas and thoughts control where you attend. You have voluntary control over what information you’re going to choose to process.”

Bottom-up attention, is thought to be a more primitive, but important process that would, for example, allow a predator, such as a lion, to be noticed among a group of zebras. It is also when people notice something different or salient in their environment, such as a door suddenly opening and someone walking through it into a classroom.

With top-down attention, the ability to ignore certain stimuli in the search for something specific, such as lost keys, is greatly enhanced.

Adler has also found, in as yet unpublished research, that top-down attention has not developed in infants even by six months of age. This could have potential implications for developmental disabilities if it doesn’t develop fully. That’s because the attentional deficit exhibited in developmental disabilities might be related to the top-down, goal-oriented and controlling way of allocating attention, says Adler.

“Visual attention is regarded by many as the gateway to information processing in the brain. It is one of the areas that is thought to be limiting in infancy, and one of the things that has to develop,” says Adler. “A lot of things, such as intellectual development, academic performance and developmental disabilities, all relate back in some way to attention. Even autism and Attention Deficit Disorder have an attention component. So it plays a large factor.”

Most studies to date have not compared infants and adults using the same tasks and measurements. For this study, the infants are on their backs with the stimuli above them on a screen, while infrared light tracks their eye movements.

“The aim of the present study was to add to our understanding of infants’ ability to selectively attend to particular items in the presence of competing stimuli by examining the development of selective attention mechanisms involved in visual search, particularly the role of bottom-up processing of stimulus salience,” says Adler.

The study, “Search Asymmetry and Eye Movements in Infants and Adults”, was published online in the journal of Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics.

By Sandra McLean, YFile deputy editor

The results of a York-led research project looking at children with developmental disabilities has found more than half of the children also had motor impairments, one-third had no friends at school, half had no friends outside of school and 44 per cent  were reported to have additional challenges, including anxiety and depression.

The Great Outcomes for Kids Impacted by Severe Developmental Disabilities (GO4KIDDS) research project also showed that the stress of raising children with developmental disabilities was taking a toll on the parents with 41 per cent reporting mental health problems and nearly half reporting poor health.

Some of the results of the research were shared March 18at the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health hosted celebration and wrap-up of the research phase of the GO4KIDDS research project, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The project was initiated by a group of researchers and clinicians who saw the need to provide a better understanding about the health, well-being and social inclusion of school-aged children with severe developmental disabilities (DD) and the experiences of their families.

Together, the team of researchers and clinicians represented different sectors and disciplines, as well as a broad range of institutions and centres – four Universities (York, Queen’s, Brock and Western), two hospitals (Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario), as well as  community treatment programs (e.g. Surrey Place Centre) and private practices (e.g. Four Points).

Principal investigator and psychology Professor Adrienne Perry opened the day with the caveat that although the research has been completed, the hard work is far from done. As this project involves different sectors and disciplines, it is important to mobilize the knowledge now and put it to practical use to help those whom they studied.

“The process of putting together the team who’ve been involved was very stimulating and rewarding. The data about health, well-being and social inclusion in regards to children with developmental disabilities and autism forms an important body of work that didn’t exist before today in Canada,” said Perry. “We’re grateful for the funding from CIHR because the findings have important implications. Now our job is to get it out to policy-makers and families in order to make the knowledge useful. The title of the study is Great Outcomes, but some of our findings are not so great – but this is important for people to know, too.”

The project consisted of two objectives: a nationwide “report card” asking parents about their children’s skills and behaviors, physical health, mental health and behavior problems, social participation and well-being, and three focused studies. The co-principal investigators included York psychology Professors James Bebko and Jonathan Weiss, and Queen’s University psychology Professor Patricia Minnes, and team leads Barry Isaacs, director of research and evaluation at Surrey Place Centre, and Professor Rosemary Condillac of Brock University. Together they took on varying roles in carrying out the Family Quality of Life Study, the Social Inclusion Study and the Health Care and Service Utilization Study that comprised the second objective of the GO4KIDDS Project.

Along with the co-investigators, there were co-applicants from other universities and organizations, project coordinators, research coordinators, coders and graduate students hired on to help over the span of the project. This undertaking managed to recruit 800 different families for its database, create 31 posters for local and international conferences, present at six conferences, spur five master’s and bachelor’s thesis projects (so far) and distribute $193,714 to 24 graduate students.

Among the project’s findings:

• More than 60 per cent of children with DD had motor impairments (ranging from being extremely clumsy to needing a wheelchair); nearly 30 per cent had eating difficulties (ranging from excessively picky to needing a feeding tube); and more than 20 per cent experience seizures;

• 16 per cent have stayed overnight in the hospital in the last year and 11 per cent have visited the emergency room more than three times in the last year;

• 44 per cent of caregivers reported that their child regularly showed multiple types of challenging behaviours – self-injurious behaviour, aggressive behaviour and mental health issues such as anxiety or depression;

• Although 62 per cent of children were rated as being generally happy, almost three quarters of parents reported that their children were not achieving their potential; and

• More than 70 per cent of the children were not playing team sports;  more than 60 per cent were not able to be involved in community activities such as Brownies or Cubs; one-third had no friends at school and more than half had no friends outside of school;

Stresses on parents were also significant as the study found nearly half of parents reported poor health; another 41 per cent reported mental health problems – of which 15 per cent were significant and 26 per cent mild – and one-third of parents reported having a high burden caring for their child with DD.

Among the project’s recommendations:

• Professionals need to better recognize mental health issues in children with DD and promote quicker access to appropriate evidence-based interventions that target behaviour problems;

• Encourage more opportunities for meaningful social experiences for children with DD in their communities, some of which may require more specialized supports or adapted community options; and

• Ensure that better supports are available for families when they really need them to prevent crisis situations from occurring.

At the research celebration, Weiss spoke of the “Report Card” and how the team broke it into more manageable pieces, so as to not inundate families with long questionnaires before getting basic information from them. They received responses from over 400parents (mainly from mothers). Seventy per cent of the responses were about boys with DD, where 57 per cent of the whole group with developmental disabilities were also on the Autism Spectrum.

“If we wanted to know about quality of life, we would ask about quality of life,” said Weiss, arguing that their methodology is more direct and easier to code than others in the field. One of the main results from the survey was that a psychiatric diagnosis for those who already had a developmental disability is often linked to negative life events like a transition to a new school an injury or illness in the family, or legal issues.

“This is an ideal example of an emerging research team. Together, a number of researchers from a numbers of institutions managed to study real world issues that had an impact on children with developmental disabilities, including those with autism. The results have implications for policies and practices to support youth with developmental disabilities across the country,” said Weiss.

Bebko’s project, the Social Inclusion study, ran into difficulty finding participants and obtaining approval to study the children (at schools and other community settings). The end results of this study were based on 26 children (median age of 11). He reported that children would rarely, if ever, initiate or be the recipients of interactions with others, even though other children were generally in proximity to them.

“It’s been a gratifying process to be part of. When we started out we realized these kids were often not included in research and we wanted to find out what life was like for them. What our research doesn’t show is that some peers are being really supportive on an intermittent basis. In many cases, though, these kids are like an island. We’re hoping these findings will spur policy makers to improve the situations and raise awareness for it,” said Bebko.

The researchers will be presenting the project at the Ontario Association on Developmental Disabilities annual conference at the beginning of April, after which they will work out a plan to start presenting their findings to different ministries and community organizations.

More information about the project can be found on GO4KIDDS.ca.

By Arina Kharlamova in the Office of the Dean, Faculty of Health