McGill Psychology
@mcgillpsych.bsky.social
McGill Psychology Department's research, news and more!
New research from Prof. Anna Weinberg's lab identifies distinct profiles of early-life stress and how they interact with recent stress to shape mental health in early adulthood. Recently published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. doi.org/10.1002/jclp...
Congratulations to Prof. Signy Sheldon for being awarded a grant from the Alzheimer Society Research Program for her project: Music-Based Interventions to Engage Memory in Individuals Living with Dementia braincanada.ca/funded-grant...
Music-Based Interventions to Engage Memory in Individuals Living with Dementia
Browse the Brain Canada’s directory of funded research grants, showcasing projects advancing understanding and treatment of neurological conditions.
braincanada.ca
From Dr. Jennifer Bartz's lab: oxytocin shapes how we recall our mothers' warmth—more positively for securely attached people, more negatively for anxiously attached ones—evidence it heightens the emotional salience of social memories. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42149556/
New from Profs. Gillian O'Driscoll and Debra Titone: eye-tracking during story reading shows schizophrenia and dyslexia share the same word-level reading bottleneck — evidence that reading difficulties in both may have common cognitive roots. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
New from Prof. Rose Bagot's lab in Cell Reports: GABAergic interneurons aren't mere support cells—they encode reward information themselves. And when animals explore rather than exploit, they track outcome history more strongly. www.cell.com/cell-reports...
GABAergic neurons in medial prefrontal cortex and ventral hippocampus encode information about reward history in male mice
During reward seeking, GABAergic interneurons in medial prefrontal cortex and ventral hippocampus encode recent reward outcomes through suppression of activity. This is independent of task…
cell.com
New research from Prof. David Ostry's lab shows motor memories work like verbal memories: the right cues can unlock them. After people learned a new reaching movement, a robot passively guided their arm—and that physical cue helped them reproduce what they'd learned. doi.org/10.1152/jn.0...
Cued recall of human motor memory | Journal of Neurophysiology | American Physiological Society
In verbal memory, retrieval cues can facilitate recall of otherwise inaccessible information. Recent work, using passive movements following a motor learning task, suggests that somatic retrieval…
journals.physiology.org
New review from Prof. Caroline Palmer's lab: when people make music, dance, or chant together, they sync up in time. It surveys research on reciprocity—the give-and-take between people keeping time. nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
New work by former undergraduate student Ziqi Fu, in collaboration with Profs. Anna Weinberg and Ross Otto, finds that impulsive people don't necessarily make more riskier choices, but they sure make risky choices faster! Out now in Affective Science: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Off the Cuff: Self-Reported Positive Urgency Predicts Rapid Choices During Risky Decision-Making - Affective Science
Impulsivity is a multifaceted personality trait reflecting a tendency to act on immediate urges, often linked to maladaptive real-world behaviors. One facet of impulsivity, Positive Urgency—the…
link.springer.com
New theoretical work published by Profs. Keita Christophe and Eric Hehman lays out a taxonomy of discrimination, with the hopes of better organizing results and understanding how and when they might generalize Out now in Psychological Review: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
Happy summer! McGill Psychology Department colleagues/collaborators/friends sharing popsicles (thanks to the building management)
New research out by McGill Psychology Department Researchers Drs. Sonia Krol and Jennifer Bartz! www.mcgill.ca/psychology/c...
What an illusion involving a fake hand can tell us about our mind-body connection
People who have a weaker sense of self are also more likely to have less bodily awareness, McGill researchers have found. The study supports the idea that people’s perceptions of themselves and how…
mcgill.ca
This year, we had the privilege of celebrating 478 graduates who worked tirelessly to reach this milestone: 6 Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 2 Master of Science (MSc) 66 Bachelor of Science (BSc) 31 Bachelor of Arts & Science (BA & Sc.) 373 Bachelor of Arts (BA) Congratulations, Class of 2026!
Our new paper in Current Psychology shows that beautifying your photos comes with a social cost. @mcgillpsych.bsky.social www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/cha...
Posting digitally enhanced photos of yourself could have a social cost, researchers find
The use of disclaimer labels on digitally enhanced portraits could have unintended social consequences for their subjects, according to a study by a team of McGill researchers. Researchers at the Labo...
mcgill.ca
New Research by Profs @annaweinberg.bsky.social and Keita Christophe just published in Developmental Psychology: The Association Between Parental Monitoring and Adolescent Cognitive Flexibility Across Neighborhood Contexts psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
New Research from Prof. David Ostry's lab published in PNAS: "Sensory basis of speech motor learning and memory" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Soutenez-nous! Aujourd’hui, nous amassons des fonds pour le projet — Psychology Research Experience Stipend (PRESti) — dans le cadre de #McGill24. Le don que vous verserez sera bonifié, jusqu’à un dollar pour chaque dollar reçu. Visitez le tinyurl.com/efwcte2j!
tinyurl.com
Help us reach our goal! We are fundraising for the Psychology Research Experience Stipend (PRESti) today, as part of #McGill24. This will allow more undergrads to participate in paid summer research. When you make a gift, your donation is matched dollar for dollar! tinyurl.com/efwcte2j
tinyurl.com
Does knowing what you want in a relationship impact loneliness and well-being? PhD student Katya Kredl and Prof John Lydon’s two studies suggest yes. For single young adults actively dating, not knowing what they were looking for predicted increased loneliness which decreased life satisfaction.
Knowing What You Want: The Role of Relationship Clarity in Single Young Adults' Loneliness and Well‐Being
The goal of the current study was to explore the role of relationship clarity—the extent to which someone understands what they want in a relationship—in single young adults' dating experiences. We h...
doi.org
Your nervous system may influence memory and attention! While the autonomic nervous system is linked to cognitive processes, the connection is unclear in females. PhD candidate Alicia Duval and Prof. Blaine Ditto conducted a review on this connection in females.
We've extended our Fall 2025 deadline for the Experimental Psychology Program!
We’re PSYCH-ed about convocation! This spring, we are thrilled to celebrate all of our graduates: 627 Bachelor’s degrees, 2 Master’s degrees, and 7 PhDs! Félicitations à tous et à toutes!
Congratulations to our PhD student, Jeffrey To, who was chosen as one of 25 finalists in the federal 2025 Social Science and Humanities Research Council Storytellers challenge! 🎉 His 3-minute video on his research on perceptions of diversity, equity and inclusion, was selected among 161 entries.
Emotions can shape what we remember — even events that happen before them. 💭 Through two behavioural experiments led by PhD student Jamie Snytte and Prof. Signy Sheldon, it was found that a neutral video was remembered less accurately if it was followed by an emotional, conceptually related video.
Our research on gaze communication covered by Vice! www.vice.com/en/article/h... @mcgillpsych.bsky.social @commspsychol.nature.com
Humans Can Actually Communicate Using Just Their Eyes
A new study suggests the feelings we get from eye contact aren't just gut reactions but actual communication signals the brain can detect.
vice.com
Meet Professor Mathieu Roy & learn more about his research on "Investigating Music’s Impact on Pain Perception" at the BRAMS-CRBLM Lecture Series on Wednesday April 9th, 3-4:30 pm! 📅 shorturl.at/5WvBE
Fibromyalgia affects more than just pain—it impacts cognition too. A study led by Erika Gentile & Prof. Mathieu Roy explored the cognitive profile of fibromyalgia. They found worse verbal memory & executive function in fibromyalgia, predicted by pain severity & poor sleep—key targets for treatment.
The Music4Pain Research Network is hosting a free webinar on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM (EST)! Register here: tinyurl.com/yckyf4bz
Soutenez-nous! Aujourd’hui, nous amassons des fonds pour le projet — Psychology Research Experience Stipend (PRESti) — dans le cadre de #McGill24. Le don que vous verserez sera bonifié, jusqu’à un dollar pour chaque dollar reçu. Visitez le tinyurl.com/efwcte2j
We are fundraising for the Psychology Research Experience Stipend (PRESti) today, as part of #McGill24. This will allow more undergrads to participate in paid summer research opportunities. When you make a gift, your donation will be matched up to dollar for dollar! tinyurl.com/efwcte2j
