Visual Development Lab

December 2010

• Ashna Patel publishes a paper in the Journal of Vision on the slow development of sensitivity to differences in spatial frequency.
• Rachel Robbins publishes a paper in Developmental Psychobiology on deficits in children treated for bilateral congenital cataracts.
• Dave Ellemberg publishes a paper in Seeing and Perceiving on children's difficulty in seeing the global direction of moving elements.
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at the University of Otago, New Zealand, on the nature of critical periods for visual development.

November 2010

• Laura Gibson publishes a paper in Vision Research on a neural network model of newborns' eye movements.
• Lisa Betts presents a poster at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on the tuning of sensitivity to the direction of moving dots.
• Simon Jeon presents a poster at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on developmental changes in contrast sensitivity and their origin in increasing neural efficiency.
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk on critical periods to the Western Australian chapter of the Australian College of Children and Young People's Nurses.

October 2010

• Laura Gibson gives a talk at the meeting of the American Synaesthesia Association on the consistency of sequence-spacing mapping in typical adults.
• Terri Lewis gives at talk at the annual meeting of the Canadian Amblyopia Network in Montreal on new surprises and new directions in deprivation amblyopia.
• Daphne Maurer gives a colloquium at the University of Western Syndey, Australia, on lessons from synaesthesia for understanding normal development.
• Daphne Maurer gives a colloquium at the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science in Sydney, Australia, on re-examining critical periods from data on cataract-reversal patients.

September 2010

• Terri Lewis speaks on surprising results from cataract-reversal patients at the retirement celebration for Janet Atkinson and Oliver Braddick as part of the Autumn School in Cognitive Neuroscience at Oxford.
• Daphne Maurer gives a colloquium at the University of Western Australia on re-examining critical periods from data on cataract-reversal patients.

August 2010

• Cathy Mondloch publishes a paper in Perception on the processing of white and Asian faces by adults living in rural areas of the United States versus China.
• Simon Jeon publishes a paper in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology on developmental changes in the effect of crowding on visual acuity.

July 2010

• Larissa Vingilis-Jarenko presents a poster at the meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development in Lusaka on the development of the perception of facial attractiveness.
• Bat-sheva Hadad publishes a paper in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology on children's sensitivity to subjective contours.
• Terri Lewis presents a poster at the International Society for Eye Research in Montreal on sensitivity to global and biological motion of visually normal children and patients treated for congenital cataract.
• Charles Maurer gives a colloquium at the University of Western Australia on the illusion of reality in paintings and photographs.

June 2010

• Xiaoqing Gao publishes a paper in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology on the development of sensitivity to facial expressions.
• Mark Vida, Xiaoqing Gao, Adélaïde; de Heering, and Mohini Patel present posters at the annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society in Naples.
• Terri Lewis gives a talk at the annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society in Naples on the different effects of early visual deprivation on sensitivity to the direction of moving dots versus biological motion.
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at Birkbeck College, London, on synaesthesia and its implications for understanding the development of perception.
• The BrainCPR network holds its sixth meeting in Spain.
• Daphne Maurer is appointed Distinguished University Professor.

May 2010

• Xiaoqing Gao passes his Ph.D. oral.

April 2010

• Mark Vida wins the prestigious NSERC Vanier Scholarship for three years. Only 57 were granted this year across Canada.
• Mohini Patel wins an NSERC graduate scholarship for her master's work.
• Mark Vida, Adélaïde; de Heering, Laura Gibson, Ferrinne Spector, and Xiaoqing Gao present posters at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in Montréal.
• Vickie Armstrong wins an Autism Research Training Fellowship for her post-doctoral research in the Autism Research Centre at Dalhousie University.
• Bat-sheva Hadad publishes a paper in Vision Research on children's ability to integrate elements of a contour.

March 2010

• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at Emory University about the possibile roots of sound symbolism in early synesthesia.
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at the International Conference on Infant Studies about early deficits caused by early visual deprivation from cataracts.

January 2010

• Xiaoqing Gao publishes a paper in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology on the effect of visual deprivation on the processing of facial features.
• Cathy Mondloch publishes a paper in Perception on the effect of visual deprivation on the processing of facial features.
• Mayu Nishimuru gives birth to baby boy Taiga.
• Daphne Maurer is elected President-Elect of the International Society on Infant Studies

November 2009

• Vickie Armstrong publishes an article in Vision Research on the development of sensitivity to motion from age three through adulthood.
• Simon Jeon publishes a paper in a special issue of Journal of Vision on the efficiency of visual processing.
• Lisa Betts gives a talk at the University of Glasgow on her research on the effect of aging on sensitivity to motion.
• Laura Gibson gives a Cognition-Perception Seminar at McMaster about her research on the linking of space to ordinal sequences.
• Ashna Patel passes her M.Sc. oral.

September 2009

• Nicole Taylor publishes a paper in Neuropsychologia on the vulnerability of sensitivity to global motion, global form, and biological motion in preterm infants.
• Gill Rhodes publishes a paper in the British Journal of Psychology on the effect of contact with another race on the ability to recognise faces of that race.
• Terri Lewis publishes a review article in a special issue of Optometry and Vision Science dedicated to Velma Dobson.
• Adélaïde de Heering joins the lab as a post-doctoral fellow.
• Daphne Maurer is elected a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science.

August 2009

• Josh Hamid wins an award for a poster at the NSERC Research Poster Competition in Vancouver, "Rising Stars of Research 2009." The poster describes his undergraduate thesis study of single letter and crowded acuity.
• Ashna Patel passes her M.Sc. oral.

July 2009

• Larissa Vingilis-Jaremko wins a prestigious Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship from NSERC.
• Lisa Betts joins the lab as a post-doctoral fellow.

June 2009

• Mayu Nishimura publishes a paper in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology on children's mental representation of faces.
• The BrainCPR network holds its fifth meeting at the Riken Brain Science Institute in Japan.
• Daphne Maurer presents two talks at universities in Tokyo, one on the effects of experience on the development of face processing and one on the development of cross-modal perception and its relation to synaesthesia.

May 2009

• Vickie Armstrong and Ferrinne Spector successfully defend their Ph.D. theses.
• Ashna Patel, Bat-sheva Hadad, Simon Jeon, and Terri Lewis present posters at the meeting of the Vision Science Society.
• Mark Vida joins the lab as a new graduate student with a prestigious NSERC graduate award.

April 2009

• At the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Ferrinne Spector presents a poster on pre-school children with coloured grapheme synaesthesia, and during the Faces Preconference, Xiaoqing Gao presents a talk on the dimensions underlying the perception of facial expressions in children and adults.
• Kathleen Lee and Jennifer Weeks begin working in the lab under the summer NSERC awards that they won.

March 2009

• Ruben Stone Oller is born to Ferrinne Spector and Jonathan Oller.

February 2009

• Mayu Nishimuru marries Tiger Tanaka in Japan.

January 2009

• Ferrinne Spector publishes a paper in Developmental Psychology on how synesthesia can inform our understanding of the development of crossmodal perception.
• Xiaoqing Gao publishes a paper in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology on developmental changes in sensitivity to subtle facial expressions.

November 2008

• Josh Hamid and Terri Lewis give talks at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on the normal development of visual sensitivity, and Ashna Patel presents a poster on visual development.
• Daphne Maurer leads a BrainCPR workshop on stroke recovery and its implications for understanding developmental changes in brain plasticity. The proceedings will be published by Developmental Psychobiology.
• Daphne Maurer gives a public lecture on understanding the perspectives of research subjects, and she co-facilitates a one-day workshop on research ethics, as part of Encounters in Bioethics 2008-2009, Thunder Bay.

October 2008

• Phil Cooper publishes a paper in Perception on the effect of short-term training in the lab on subsequent judgments of facial attaractiveness.
• Cathy Mondloch publishes a paper in Perception on the effect of orientation on the holistic processing of faces.

September 2008

• Laura Gibson joins the lab as a graduate student studying the development of spatial-frequency channels.
• Daphne Maurer organizes the 7th annual conference of the American Synesthesia Association. She also give an introduction to synaesthesia at a public lecture/performance entitled "A Colourful Appetite for Music: How the Brain Connects Music to Colour and Pleasure"

August 2008

• Ferrinne Spector publishes a paper in Perception on the natural color associations of toddlers to the shape of letters.

July 2008

• Mayu Nishimuru publishes a paper in Developmental Science showing that by age 8, children's representation of faces is similar to that of adults.
• Mayu Nishimuru successfully defends her Ph.D. thesis on the development of face processing and starts an NSERC post-doctoral fellowship with Marlene Behrman at Carnegie Mellon University.
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at the Université René-Descartes, Paris, on the effect of visual deprivation on the development of perception.

June 2008

• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at the Oxford meeting of the James S. McDonnell Foundation on the work of the network she leads on the re-examination of critical periods.

May 2008

• For the third year running, Ferrinne Spector wins one of the rare Ontario Graduate Scholarships awarded to non-Canadian graduate students.
• Mayu Nishimuru publishes a paper in Perception on the effect of training on sensitivity to the differences in spacing among facial features.
• Xiaoqing Gao, Mayu Nishimuru, Cathy Mondloch, and Nicole Taylor present posters at the meeting of the Vision Sciences Society.

April 2008

• Ferrinne Spector and Rachel Robbins present posters at the meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.
• Daphne Maurer leads a session at REB201 for the Social Sciences and Humanities on how to review a complex, international protocol.

March 2008

• Rachel Robbins presents a poster at the meeting of the Australasian Society for Experimental Psychology.
• Mayu Nishimuru wins an NSERC post-doctoral fellowship to work with Marlene Behrman at Carnegie Mellon University.
• The New York Academy of Sciences publishes an eBriefing summarizing a symposium of our Brain CPR project held during our September meeting.
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at the International Conference on Infant Studies about the surprisingly normal sensitivity to biological motion in adults with a history of early visual deprivation from cataracts. She is also discussant for a symposium on early markers of autism and chairs an invited session on perceptual foundations of acculturation.

December 2007

• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at Pennsylvania State University about the different effects of early monocular and binocular deprivation on the later development of visual perception.

November 2007

• Terri Lewis presents a poster at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego.
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at York University on the impact of visual limitations on social interactions and the development of face processing.

October 2007

• Daphne Maurer gives talks at the Universities of Guelph and Toronto (Scarborough) on the effects of early experience on perceptual development.
• Daphne Maurer publishes a review paper in Progress in Brain Research on the effects of early visual deprivation on perceptual and cognitive development.

September 2007

• Larissa Vingilis-Jaremko and Ashna Patel join the lab as new graduate students. Bat-Sheva Hadad and Simon Jeon join as post-doctoral fellows.
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at Vanderbilt University on a developmental perspective of synaesthesia.
• The Brain CPR Network, which Daphne Maurer leads, presents a symposium at the New York Academy of Sciences entitled "Plasticity of Sensory Systems: Crtical Periods Re-examined."

August 2007

• Ferrinne Spector marries Jonathan Oler.

July 2007

• Cathy Mondloch publishes a paper in Visual Cognition showing that children as young as six years process faces holistically, like adults.
• Daphne Maurer is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

June 2007

• Mayu Nishimuru, Vickie Armstrong, Xiaoqing Gao and Rachel Robbins present posters at the biennial conference of the Centre for Vision Research of York University.

May 2007

• Terri Lewis, Vickie Armstrong and Rachel Robbins present posters at the meeting of the Vision Science Society in Sarasota.
• Daphne Maurer is a Marie Curie Visiting Fellow at the University of London, where she delivers a paper on the consequences for perceptual development of early visual deprivation.

April 2007

• For the second year running, Ferrinne Spector wins an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, one of only 60 awarded to non-Canadian students.
• Terri Lewis publishes a paper in Journal of Vision comparing sensitivity to orientation in 5-year-olds and adults.
• Daphne Maurer delivers the keynote address at the Second International Congress on Synaesthesia, Science & Art in Granada, Spain. She also organizes the inaugural meeting of the McDonnell Network on the Rehabilitation of Amblyopa.

March 2007

• At the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Xiaoqing Gao, Mayu Nishimuru and Ferrinne Spector present posters and in two symposia, Cathy Mondloch discusses some of our findings on the development of face processing.
• Daphne Maurer publishes a paper in Neuropsychologia comparing the fMRI correlates of recognizing faces based on the shapes or spacing of features.

February 2007

• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at the University of Arizona on the consequences for visual development of early visual deprivation.

January 2007

• Ferrinne Spector gives a talk at the meeting of the American Synesthesia Association on the development of associations between colours and letters.
• Daphne Maurer publishes a paper in Developmental Science describing sleeper effects of early visual deprivation: permanent damage to visual capabiliates that normally emerge well after infancy.

December 2006

• Daphne Maurer gives two talks at the University of British Columbia, one on the development of synaesthesia, the other on sensitive periods in children treated for cataracts.

November 2006

• Cathy Mondloch publishes a paper in Psychological Science showing that adults' exquisite sensitivity to subtle differences between faces in the spacing of facial features is restricted to upright human faces and does not extend to simian or to inverted faces. This pattern of expertise is already established by 8 years of age.
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at the University of North Carolina on sensitive periods in children treated for cataracts.

October 2006

• Terri Lewis presents a paper at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on how context affects the discrimination of orientation in 7-year-olds and adults.
• Daphne Maurer receives a five-year grant of $2.5 million from the James McDonnell Foundation to set up a collaborative network of six laboratories to work on the remediation of amblyopia in adulthood and to reconsider the nature of critical periods more generally. The other investigators are Terri Lewis at McMaster, Daphne Bavelier at the University of Rochester, Dennis Levi at Berkeley, Donald Mitchell at Dalhousie, and Bruce McCandliss at the Sackler Institute, Cornell.

August 2006

• Phil Cooper publishes a paper in Developmental Science documenting developmental changes in the perception of attractiveness.
• Daphne Maurer publishes a paper in special issue of Developmental Cognitive Neurocience on longitudinal changes in contrast sensitivity in children who were treated for congenital cataract.

July 2006

• Rick Le Grand publishes a paper in Brain and Cognition on the abnormal face-processing skills of individuals born with prosopagnosia.

June 2006

• Mayu Nishimuru presents a poster at the 5th International Meeting for Autism Research in Montreal on configural face processing in high-functioning adults with autism.
• Daphne Maurer gives a paper at the meeting of the Center for Vision Science in Rochester on the effect of early deprivation on visual development.

May 2006

• Alejo Freire publishes a paper in Perception showing that sensitivity to biological motion improves during middle childhood.
• Terri Lewis presents a paper at the meeting of the Vision Science Society describing a new method for measuring sensitivity to orientation and documenting that 7-year-olds are less sensitive than adults. Vickie Armstrong presents a poster at the same meeting on the sensitivity of 5- year-olds and adults to various cues to motion.
• Ferrinne Spector wins an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, one of only 60 awarded to non-Canadian students.
• Daphne Maurer publishes a paper in Developmental Science on natural correspondences toddlers make between some sounds and shapes. The work was completed as the undergraduate honours thesis of Jeni Pathman, who is now in graduate school at Duke University.

April 2006

• The lab presents four posters at the meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in San Francisco. Maya Nishimura shows that learning novel patterns of blobs leads to generalizable skills, as we think happens with human faces. Cathy Moncloch shows that eight-year-olds recognize faces as adults do. Silvia Paparello (from the University of California at San Diego] shows that children who suffered focal brain lesions perinatally process faces surprisingly normally. Ferrinne Spector shows that toddlers naturally associate Os with white and Xs with black, as do synesthetic adults.
• Phil Cooper accepts a job offer from Concordia University.
• Daphne Maurer is chosen for the Faculty Association's Award for Outstanding Service for 2005.

March 2006

• Terri Lewis presents Neurophthalmology Rounds at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

February 2006

• Cathy Mondloch publishes a paper in Child Development on 4-year-olds recognition of familiar faces. Experiment 1 of the study was done by Anishka Leis for her undergraduate honours thesis.

January 2006

• Rachel Robbins joins the lab as a post-doctoral fellow. Rachel obtained her Ph.D. at the Australian National University in Canberra for research on adults' face processing.

November 2005

• Terri Lewis presents a poster at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on intercular competition during development.

September 2005

• Terri MacKay publishes a paper in Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology on research she did jointly with our lab on the processing of motion by children who were born prematurely. The results indicate that the motion pathway does not develop normally.

August 2005

• Xiaoqing Gao joins the lab to begin Ph.D. studies on the development of sensitivity to facial expressions.
• Dave Ellemberg publishes a paper in Vision Research based on research in his Ph.D. thesis showing that early visual deprivation prevents the development of normal sensitivity to more complex types of motion.
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at the University of Hong Kong on the development of face processing.

June 2005

• Phil Cooper presents a paper at the meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society on the effects of looking at yourself in the mirror on judgments of attractiveness. He was also runner-up for the best talk at the department's In-House Conference.
• Ferrinne Spector won the Clifton W. Sherman Graduate Scholarship in Science & Engineering for 2005-2006.

May 2005

• The lab presents 4 posters at the meeting of the Vision Sciences Society in Sarasota: Terri Lewis and Vickie Armstrong on 5-year-olds' immature processing of orientation and of motion, Ale Freire on adults' better sensitivity to biological motion in upright than in inverted images, and Mayu Nishimuru on the generalized benefits of training to identify novel objects.
• Daphne Maurer speaks at the University of Western Australia and Macquarie Univeristy on cross-modal perception and on the effect of early visual on the later development of acuity and of face processing.

April 2005

• Iram Ahmed publishes a paper in Vision Research (based on her undergraduate work in the lab) on children's sensitivity to the speed of moving objects.
• Terri Lewis publishes a paper in Developmental Psychobiology on evidence for multiple sensitive periods in human visual development.
• Cathy Mondloch presents a poster at the metting of the Society for Research in Child Development on four-year-olds' recognition of familiar faces.
• Sidney Segalowitz presents a poster at the meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society on the findings of our collaborative project on the EEG correlates of identifying a face.
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at the Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference entitled "Missed Sights: Consequences for the Development of Face Processing."

March 2005

• Richard Le Grand is one of the four finalists for the New York Academy of Sciences' Cattell Award for the best dissertation in psychology.
• Mayu Nishimuru wins a Canadian Graduate Scholarship, the most prestigious scholarship given by NSERC for doctoral studies.
• Daphne Maurer publishes an paper in a special issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences on the consequences of early cataract and blindness on cognitive development. She also gives a talk at three Australian universities entitled "Missed Sights: The Influence of Early Visual Deprivation on Later Visual Development."

February 2005

• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at Khon Kaen University, Thailand, entitled "Visual Development."

January 2005

• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at Université Paris V entitled "The Infant as Synesthete" and at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research (Frankfurt) entitled "The Influence of Early Visual Input on Later Visual Development."

December 2004

• Daphne Maurer is interviewed about synesthesia in infants by the Australian Broadcasting Company, CHTV, Radio Canada International, Today's Parent, and a Chinese newspaper.

November 2004

• Rick Le Grand publishes a paper in Psychological Science on impaired face processing of children born with cataracts.
• Daphne Maurer gives the keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Synesthesia Association. The address was titled, "The Infant as Synesthete?" She also gives a colloquium at Dalhousie University entitled, "Staring Development in the Face: the Role of Visual Experience in the Development of Face Processing."

October 2004

• Terri Lewis presents a poster at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on the orientation discrimination of 5-year-olds and adults. At the same meeting, Kathy O'Craven presents a poster on our fMRI results on the face processing of normal adults.
• Cathy Mondloch publishes a paper in Journal of Experimental Child Psychology entitled, "Why 8-year-olds cannot tell the difference between Steve Martin and Paul Newman." The reason is that children are less likely than adults to notice and remember differences in the distance between the eyes.
• Daphne Maurer publishes a chapter on neonatal synesthesia, examining it from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience. She also talks on "Lessons about Visual Rehabilitation from Children Treated for Cataracts" at the Fall Vision Meeting of the University of Rochester.

September 2004

• Dave Ellemberg publishes a paper in Vision Research that describes an innovative technique for measuring sensitivity to different types of motion and documents that 5-year-olds are especially immature in seeing slowly moving objects and those defined by contrast rather than luminance.
• Daphne Maurer was profiled as the "2003 Leading Investigator" by the Centre of Excellence for Early Child Development.

August 2004

• Ferrinne Spector joins the lab as a graduate student studying synesthesia.

July 2004

• Phil Cooper presents a poster at the meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development in Ghent, Belgium, on 8-year-olds' judgments of attractiveness and a paper at the meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society in Berlin, Germany on the influence of short-term experience on judgments of attractiveness.
• Terri Lewis presents a paper at the Vision Health International Summer Workshop of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research at York University entitled "Effects of Congenital Visual Deprivation."
• Daphne Maurer presents a paper at the meeting of Attention and Performance XX1 in Colorado entitled "The Infant as Synesthete?"

June 2004

• Rick Le Grand wins the Brain Star Award of the Canadian Institutes of Health for his paper in Nature Neuroscience showing that visual input to the right hemisphere during early infancy is necessary for the later development of expert face processing. He is the third person in Psychology to win this award and the second from our lab.
• Mayu Nishimura wins the prize for best talk at the Department's In-House conference. She described her finding that adults are more sensitive to the spacing of four blobs when they have been primed to see them as the features of a face rather than as the points of the letter Y.

May 2004

• At the meetings of the Vision Sciences Society, Terri Lewis and Vickie Armstrong give talks on the development of different aspects of motion processing. Also, Ale Freire presents a poster entitled "Adults are better than 6-year-olds at perceiving biological motion in noise" and Kathy O'Craven presents the results of our joint fMRI research in a poster entitled "Neural correlates of featural versus configural face processing in visually normal adults."
• At the meetings of the International Society on Infant Studies, Daphne Maurer gives a paper on sensitive periods for visual development. She also presents a poster entitled "The babies who mistook their fathers for a car: Asymmetrical categorization of faces at 6 months of age" and Rick Le Grand presents a poster entitled "Infants' sensitivity to featural and configural changes in human faces."
• Terri Lewis publishes a paper in Perception on the development of sensitivity to global form between 6 and 9 years of age. She also talks at May@mac on "What is Psychology, eh?"

April 2004

• Terri Lewis gives a Science-in-the-City lecture on "What Babies See."
• Mayu Nishimura presents a poster at the meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society entitled "Perceiving Changes in Spacing among Four 'Blobs': Are Adults more Sensitive when Primed to See them as Facial Features?" (The answer is yes.)
• Daphne Maurer gives a talk at the M.I.N.D. Institute, University of California Davis Medical Center, entitled "The Role of Early Experience in Driving Human Development: Lessons from Children treated for Congenital Cataracts."
• The lab's work is featured in two articles in the Globe and Mail's series on human development.

March 2004

• Daphne Maurer gives a talk to the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California at San Diego, entitled "Staring Development in the Face".

February 2004

• Iram Ahmed presented a poster on the research she did in the lab last summer as part of an NSERC undergraduate student fellowship. The poster was entitled "Velocity Discrimination in 5-year-olds and Adults," and was featured on McMaster's "Daily News" web site.

January 2004

• Daphne Maurer is a guest of a research network on Experience-Based Brain and Biological Development. She speaks about the effects of early visual deprivation on the later development of face processing.
• CIHR announce they are funding a grant for us with Cheryl Grady and Kathy O'Craven at the Rotman Institute and Sid Segalowitz and Jane Dwyan at Brock University, to study the neural correlates of early visual deprivation from congenital cataracts.

December 2003

• Cathy Mondloch publishes a chapter in The Development of Face Processing in Infancy and Early Childhood: Current Perspectives on the importance of early visual experience for the development of some, but not all, aspects of face processing.
• Dave Ellemberg publishes a paper in Spatial Vision showing that sensitivity to the direction of local motion develops more quickly when the moving image is defined by luminance rather than contrast, as would be expected if simpler visual processing develops more rapidly.

November 2003

• Terri Lewis presents a poster at the Society for Neuroscience on the "Ups and Downs of Motion Processing in Children." It shows that 5-year-olds are not so sensitive as adults to any type of motion signal, but their degree of their immaturity is greater for motion signals that require more steps of cortical processing.
• Daphne Maurer speaks on "How to Review a Research Protocol" at a national training conference for members of Research Ethics Boards in the Social Sciences and Humanities.

October 2003

• Rick Le Grand publishes a paper in Nature Neuroscience on the importance of visual input to the right hemisphere during the first few months of birth for the later development of normal face processing.

September 2003

• Rick Le Grand defends his Ph.D. thesis. The external examiner suggests it be nominated for an award.
• Daphne Maurer presents an invited paper at the Princeton meeting entitled "About Faces: A multidisciplinary approach to the science of face perception." Rick Le Grand and Cathy Mondloch present posters at the meeting.
• Jeni Pathman, Anishka Leis, and Andrea Kingdom begin work on undergraduate honours theses. Vickie Lopes joins the lab as a volunteer.

August 2003

• Dave Ellemberg's Ph.D. thesis wins the Canadian Psychological Association's Award of Excellence.
• Cathy Mondloch publishes a paper in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology on the development of everyday face processing.

July 2003

• Daphne Maurer becomes Chair of the McMaster Research Ethics Board.
• The Discovery channel features the lab's findings on babies' perception of faces in its series on Human Brain Development. The episode is aired on the Discovery Health Channel in Canada:
  
  July 13th - 9pm
  July 14th - 8pm / 11pm / 2am
  July 19th - 12pm / 8pm
  July 20th - 4pm

June 2003

• Rick Le Grand accepts an NSERC post-doctoral fellowship to join the Perceptual Expertise Network at the University of Victoria.
• Daphne Maurer presents a paper in the invited symposium on Plasticity: from Neuron to Behaviour at the meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science. Terri Lewis presents a paper at the same meeting on Seeing beyond Acuity and six members of the lab present posters (Rick Le Grand, Mayu Nishimuru, Vickie Armstrong, Cathy Mondloch, Jeni Pathman, Phil Cooper).
• Mayu Nishimuru and Vickie Armstrong present posters at the York Vision Conference on Detection and Discrimination of Spatial Form defined by luminance, texture, motion, disparity and colour. Their posters describe findings on adults' sensitivity to phyical differences in faces versus letters and babies' perception of motion.
• Phil Cooper presents a poster on adults' perception of attractiveness in babies' faces at the meeting of Human Behaviour and Evolution Society.
• Daphne Maurer finishes six years on the National Council of the Ethics of Research with Human Participants.

May 2003

• Terri Lewis and Rick Le Grand present posters at the meeting of the Vision Sciences Society on the development of sensitivity to different types of motion and the nature of face processing in adults with prosopagnosia since childhood.
• Daphne Maurer presents a paper in a symposium on The Development of Facial Expertise at the Society for Research in Child Development. Cathy Mondloch presents a poster on children's reactions to bizarre faces.
• Annishka Leis and Iram Ahmed join the lab as part of the NSERC summer undergraduate programme. Shelley Burgess joins the lab as a volunteer.

April 2003

• Daphne Maurer gives colloquia at MIT and the University of Rochester on the role of visual input in driving the later development of acuity and face processing.
• Rick Le Grand presents a poster at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society on differences between featural and configural processing of faces.

March 2003

• Dave Ellemberg publishes a paper in Vision Research demonstrating that the brain takes more time to process more complex types of motion.

January 2003

• Alejo Freire joins the lab as a post-doctoral fellow with funding from NSERC. He will study the development of sensitivity to biological motion.
• Cathy Mondloch publishes a paper in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology showing that the ability to selectively attend to local elements of a pattern continues to improve into adolescence.