Four Psychology graduate students have been awarded research grants from the Sara Spencer Endowment. The awards, adjudicated by the Graduate Advisors of departments in the Faculty of Social Sciences, are designed to support applied research that focuses on Victoria’s Capital Regional District. The 2012 Psychology recipients and their projects are:

Lesley Baker, “Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction for Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders” ($2,100)

Erin Eadie, “The Role of Health Risk Behaviours in the Link Between Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Physical Health Among Survivors of Interpersonal Trauma” ($1,200)

Sarah Hutchison, “Obesity, Self-regulation, Executive Function, and Exercise in Young Children ($1,200)

Kristina Kowalski, “Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds” ($1,200)

Three other graduate students from the Faculty of Social Sciences were also recipients.

 In an opinion piece for the Times Colonist today, Dr. Gifford discusses how humans are very skilled at finding excuses to avoid necessary change. He asks, "If so many people are concerned about the environment, why aren't more of us doing what is necessary to solve the problems?" He then goes on to answer the question using the seven 'dragons of inaction.'  Times Colonist

Psychology grad student, Lesley Baker has been recognized by the Centre for Early Childhood Research and Policy for her exemplary early childhood research. Lesley's project "Mindfulness Training for Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD)" will be showcased this Saturday, March 10th, at the 4th Annual Graduate Student Research Day (10am - 3pm at Harry Hickman Building, Room 120, UVic). Lesley will also receive a scholarship from the Centre for Early Childhood Research and Policy in recognition of her early childhood work. To register contact reach@uvic.ca or visit reach.uvic.ca

Applications are being accepted for the Honours Program 2012. To apply, visite the Honours Program page of our website.

Kristina Brache

BC Psychological Association Certificate Award

Andreas Breuer

Erich & Shelley Mohr Fellowship In Psychology

Cassandra Brown

Alice Lou-Poy Graduate Scholarship (through Centre on Aging)

Valerie Caldeira

Quality Move Management Inc/Allied International Vancouver Graduate Scholarship

Correne DeCarlo

W.H. Gaddes Scholarship

Julie Irwin

Norma M. Wilson Graduate Scholarship

Justin Karr

Dr. Robert Michael Peet Graduate Scholarship

Janet Love

R.B May Scholarship

Rylie Moore

Arthur Lester Benton Award

Stacey Ross

McCall Bros. Graduate Scholarship in Clinical Psychology

Catharine Sparks

Rotary Club of Saanich Scholarship (through Centre on Aging)

Christopher Warren

Robert, David & Douglas Vickery Award

Professor Jim Tanaka presentation at TEDx Victoria entitled Facing up to Autism: New Tools for Different Minds. Watch the full presentation.

Making faces is the object of the game. National Globe and Mail reporter Justine Hunter interviewed UVic psychologist Dr. Jim Tanaka of UVic's new Centre for Autism Research, Technology, and Education, where a small team is developing software programs like FaceMaze to help people with autism learn to read others’ expressions. This article is on the front page of the BC edition of today's Globe and Mail.

(update) On December 19th, UVic psychologist Dr. Jim Tanaka was interviewed on the nation-wide CBC Radio evening program "As It Happens" about the new UVic centre for autism research (CARTe) and its FaceMaze program. Podcast

Does exercise improve memory and learning in children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD)? Dr. Brian Christie, a neuroscientist in the University of Victoria’s Division of Medical Sciences, is seeking community help to find out. He’s looking for children with FASD between the ages of six and 17 to participate in a 12-week exercise program. (learn more...)

OTTAWA, December 8, 2011 - The RCMP and University of Victoria researchers have entered into a unique partnership to address the issue of youth bullying and suicide. On December 7, six RCMP officers from across Canada came together in Ottawa to take part in a pilot program where they received training in understanding and preventing bullying in elementary school children. Full Article (RCMP)

Mental health professionals on campuses agree anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses are on the rise. This is the focus of one of the articles in the Maclean's special rankings issue, now on newsstands. Macleans.ca

T-shirts, long sleeve shirts, hoodies and sweat pants that say UVic Psychology with a psi on the back. See the Poster.

An article in the New-Brunswick Telegraph-Journal discusses the popular anti-bullying program (WITS) initiated by principal researcher and UVic psychology professor Dr. Bonnie Leadbeater. New-Brunswick Telegraph-Journal

Last week, works of Coast and Straits Salish art were installed in the newly renovated Cornett Building as part of permanent and rotating exhibitions of contemporary art. The exhibited art comes from UVic Art Collections as well as generous gifts and loans to the Faculty of Social Sciences by George and Christiane Smyth. A self-guided art tour is available: visit this link and then click on the Coast Salish design for a PDF of the art tour.

Psi Chi, the international honour society in psychology, was founded in 1929 to foster excellence in scholarship in the science of psychology (see www.psichi.org ).  There are approximately 1,000 chapters of Psi Chi, almost all in the US.  In 2003, UVic founded the first chapter of Psi Chi outside of the US.  Last year our chapter was recognized as the best in the Western North America region (for which we received a plaque and $500).  More recently, we received a Model Chapter Award for the 2010-11 academic year (for which we received a certificate and $100).  We were one of only 36 chapters to qualify for this award for 2010-11, which is “presented annually to recognize and reward Psi Chi chapters that consistently maintain outstanding records of membership inductions, chapter correspondence, service projects, and other criteria associated with being an outstanding chapter.”  For more information about our chapter, please visit http://web.uvic.ca/~psichi/ .

A new study demonstrates the real-life social benefits of self-affirmation. Details here.

UVic psychologist Dr. Danu Stinson was interviewed for 'A' News coverage last night about the Vancouver riots and mob mentality.  'A' News (Video)

The WITS anti-bullying program, developed with community partners at UVic and now with funding of $180,000 the Public Health Agency of Canada, can expand into BC’s remote and rural schools and evaluate its success there. Dr. Bonnie Leadbeater, program leader and UVic psychologist, provides comment for this local article.  Oak Bay News  UVic News

Congratulations to Travis Baker who was recently nominated by the Psychology Department to present a poster of his doctoral research at the Canadian Student Health Research Forum in Winnipeg (June 7-9, 2011).
His research was awarded a silver medal in the CIHR National Student Research Poster Competition at the forum.  See the following website for information about the forum and for a list of award winners (soon to be posted): http://www.umanitoba.ca/medicine/research_days/index.html

Here is the abstract from his poster presentation:

Genetic, Drugs, and Cognitive Control: Individual Differences Underlying Substance Dependence

Baker, T.E., Stockwell, T., Barnes, B., and Holroyd, C. B.

Recent theories of drug dependence propose that the transition from occasional recreational substance use to harmful use and dependence results from the impact of disrupted midbrain dopamine signals for reinforcement learning on frontal brain areas that implement cognitive control and decision making. Further, the development and expression of the dopamine system is determined in part by genetic factors that vary across individuals such that dopamine-related genes are partly responsible for addiction vulnerability. This study tested the hypothesis that many of the cognitive and behavioral impairments associated with drug dependence results from the impact of disrupted dopamine signals on frontal brain areas that implement cognitive control and decision making: By acting on the abnormal reinforcement learning system of the genetically vulnerable, addictive drugs hijack the control system to reinforce maladaptive drug-taking behaviors. Using electrophysiological and behavioral assays of the integrity of dopamine system and brain regions involved in cognitive control and decision making in young adults, we recently demonstrated that substance-dependent participants, compared non-dependent participants, produce a severely reduced feedback error related negativity (fERN), which is believed to reflect the impact of dopamine reinforcement learning signals on cognitive control areas in frontal cortex, and behaved abnormally on a decision-making task, the Frank Probabilistic Selection Task, a task thought to reflect dopamine role in decision making. Here, we examined whether these findings result in part from dopamine-related genetic differences across individuals by collecting genetic polymorphism data, (i.e. DRD2, DRD4, COMT), together with fERN and Frank PST data in a substance dependent and non-dependent population. These results highlight important neurobiological and behavioral differences between dependent users that can inform the development of individually-tailored treatment programs.

Details here.

Details here.