Additional Interests: What are the implications of human evolution on our current psychology, when the world we live in is so drastically different than the world in which our basic psychology evolved? How do we adapt to and learn within our modern surroundings and how should our cognitive predispositions inform how we educate our children and ourselves? And to what degree can we retrain psychological patterns that are no longer (or have never been) productive in our current environment?

Current Research Projects

For a complete listing of the research projects in the DevCogNeuro Lab, visit our Research Page

Preschool Training in Self-Regulation: Helping Children Help Themselves

“Self-regulation” and “executive functions” (EF) are largely synonymous and refer to such abilities as being able to stop and think before you act or speak, controlling your attention so that you stay on task and are not distracted, holding in mind the teacher’s instructions or your own earlier plans, resisting temptations to act inappropriately, and flexibly adjusting to different playmates or changed priorities.

with Deborah Leong, Elena Bodrova, Chris Lonigan, Barbara Goodson, Sahar Anwar, Jillian Bizzotto, Claire Cook, Suzanne Duvall, Sarah Munro, & Yvette Wu

Building on ground-breaking work from developmental cognitive neuroscience labs, we are administering a battery of objective, neurocognitive EF measures to preschool and elementary-school children to examine the effects of 4 different levels and kinds of executive function training on academic outcomes, executive function, and psychological and behavioral problems (e.g., ADHD & conduct disorder) in a longitudinal randomized field trial with almost 2,000 at-risk children. We hypothesize that EF training will enhance academic achievement in the short-term and that the enhancement will increase over time. Children who have learned to regulate their behaviour and attention are better students, their teachers enjoy them more, and the positive feedback loop can lead, we believe, to continued gains over the years. Preventing problems holds much more promise than trying to reverse problems once they have been allowed to develop. We also predict that children who go through a preschool program that directly teaches and supports EF will be less likely to be diagnosed with disorders of EF (such as ADHD or conduct disorder) because the program will have taught them how to exercise self-control and emotion regulation. (Some children are strongly biologically predisposed to hyperactivity & EF training alone would not be sufficient for them, but many children diagnosed with ADHD today simply never learned to exercise self-regulation.) This has direct relevance to the prevention and reduction of mental disorders and anti-social behaviour.

School project

with Sarah Munro, Cecil Chau, Renee Nossal, & Yvette Wu

We continue to develop sensitive behavioral assays of the different cognitive abilities that comprise EF. There is currently no definitive gold-standard battery with which the development of different EF components can be measured. We have therefore developed a set of tests designed to tease apart the various aspects of EF and map the typical progression of each EF ability separately from 4-18 years of age. We hope to use these results to develop a gold-standard that will be useful in the assessment of educational programs, interventions designed to improve EF, and the developmental progress of individual children’s EF functioning.

 

Publications and Presentations

Munro, S., Chau, C., Gazarian, K., Diamond, A. (in preparation). “Dramatically larger flanker effects (6 times larger).”

Sobel, D. M., Munro, S. E. (submitted) “Domain generality and domain specificity in causal inference.”

Diamond, A., Barnett, W.S., Thomas, J., & Munro, S. (2007). Preschool program improves cognitive control, Science, 318, 1387-1388. (pdf)

Sobel, D. M., Munro, S. (2006) “When Mr. Blicket Wants It, Children are Bayesian.” Presentation at the 2006 Cognitive Science Society Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC.

Munro, S. (2006). “Dramatically larger flanker effects (6 times larger).” Colloquium presented in the Cognitive Science Brownbag Series organized by Prof. James Enns, Dept. of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC

Munro, S., Chau, C., Gazarian, K., Diamond, A. (2006) “Dramatically Larger Flanker Effect: Six-Fold Elevation.” Poster Presentation at 2006 Cognitive Neuroscience Society Meeting, San Francisco, CA.

Education and Training

Personal

Escher, my strapping lad (and my other charming boy):

Awards