So Poster day finally came around and I can say that it was a really good experience. I had always seen big conventions and conferences on tv and even in person, although not all of them were academic. I had always wanted to experience being one of the presenters and I got my chance on poster day.
At first I thought that not many people would come to my poster and ask questions. But as time went along, more and more people started flooding Vari hall and I was surprised to see so many people coming up to me and asking questions. It actually felt really good to be able to answer people's questions on something I did. The undergraduate students were good to talk to because some of them had already done it last year and some were going to be doing it next year and giving them ideas about how to do a poster presentation was very refreshing for me.
The professors and graduate students on the other hand were a different story. I could always tell which students were grad students because of the way they asked questions and the way they looked at my poster. I had 3 grad students that were basically doing their masters/phd on one of the conditions I had in my thesis and it was difficult talking to them about my topic because they knew vastly more about that one particular condition (bilingualism). But talking to the grad students was a piece of cake comapred to talking to Dr. Bialystok. She's the one that does research on bilingualism, and ALL 3 grad students that had approached me regarding bilingualism were from her lab! Dr. Bialystock herself was a little intimidating because she's considered one of the leading authorities in bilingualism in terms of attention, memory, inhibition, and other executive functions. But, talking to her was also very enlightening because she gave me some really good ideas as to what I could do in the future to make my study better, some of her ideas were similar to what I had already thought up however.
Over all, the poster day was a success for me. I enjoyed making the poster and I didn't mind paying the 130 something dollars to get it professionally printed. I'll probably put the poster up in my room.
Poster day FTW!
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Look into my eyes... I will tell you if you have a disorder!
So I went through about 25+ articles trying to find evidence supporting that antisaccade tasks were effective at detecting impaired inhibition. Makes sense right? If you can't stop yourself from doing something then you probably have an impaired inhibition component of executive functioning. Well that's exactly what the antisaccade task does. McDowell et al. (2002) used an antisaccade task on schizophrenic patients who are known to have a deficient inhibition mechanism. Now the results may seem intuitive to you all, schizophrenics will generate more errors and have higher latencies, but its kinda important all the same. If schizophrenics have a lower inhibition mechanism and the antisaccade task can detect that, then its possible that many other disorders have it too and the antisaccade task can detect that too... In fact, its possible that certain disorders can be treated effectively simply by teaching people how to be more in control of themselves, for example eating disorders. Imagine that, being able to tell if people have a disorder simply by looking into their eyes! Now of course, that's stretching the bounds of scientific methodology, but its interesting no? To be able to tell, at least partly, that certain individuals may have some sort of impairment based on how they move their eyes. Gives new meaning to looking into someone's eyes doesn't it?
Friday, December 3, 2010
Learning a new language/instrument makes you makes you more able to say no?
So I started doing my thesis at York University in the 2010/2011 school year under the supervision of Dr. DeSouza at his lab called the joelab. Basically I was supposed to do my thesis on inhibition as it relates to certain types of criminal behaviour. However, I kind of missed my chance to talk with Dr. Turner who was doing a study related to what I wanted to study, so now I'm doing my thesis on inhibition as it relates to gambling, musical/bilingual training, and gaming.
Ok, so basically we're using an antisaccade paradigm to measure people's inhibition. For those of you who don't know what that means, basically we get people look at a screen and fixate on a certain point (middle of the screen) where a small square appears. The square then moves either to the left or to the right after a fixation period of 200ms to 1500ms. The square turns either red or green before it moves and the fixation time is calculated from the moment the square changes colour to the moment it moves. The subject is instructed to either look toward the square (prosaccade) or look away from the square (antisaccade) depending on which colour the square turned. So for example, in one trial the if the square turns red, the subject is instructed to look towards the square, and if it turns green, the subject is instructed to look away from the square.
Now you might be wondering, "how does staring at little colour changing, moving squares measure inhibition?" Well the idea is that humans, along with other animals, have a automatic response to look toward a moving stimulus within their field of vision. Think of it this way, when you see something moving out of the corner of your eye, you look toward it, not away from it. So, the antisaccade task places a demand on the subject to stop the automatic response of looking toward a peripherally moving stimulus and make an active decision to look away from it.
Alright, so now lets get into the real question. Why might people with bilingual/musical experience have differences in their preparation for the antisaccade vs. the prosaccade? Meaning, why would these people have a difference in the time it takes them to make a decision for the antisaccade vs. the prosaccade? Well, the prosaccade should take very little time as it is an automatic response. So one would expect that prosaccades preparation times would be minimal for anyone, regardless of bilingual/musical experience. Its the antisaccade that's interesting because it not only requires an active inhibition of an automatic response but also a decision to carry out an action contrary to that automatic response. Basically, when making an antisaccade, we'd be using higher brain functions rather than simply autonomic/routine responses.
People with bilingual/musical training are specifically trained to do multiple things at once. In case of bilingual training, one would expect that anytime a person talks in the language they use least often, they would have to inhibit their impulse to use the language which they use more often. I know I have this problem sometimes when I speak Urdu with my mother. Even though Urdu is my native language (I'm South Asian and was raised in Pakistan) I still find that I sometimes it takes more effort to speak in Urdu rather than English because I only speak Urdu maybe 20% of the time and in under very specific situations (i.e. when talking to an elder South Asian family member). Now this ties into our previous discussion about antisaccades and inhibition because I have to inhibit my automatic tendency to want to speak in English anytime I speak in Urdu. Therefore, since I do this almost on a daily basis (for at least 20% of the time that I am using verbal communication), one would expect that I would be at least a little bit better at tasks that require the use of inhibitory control because I have more practice using inhibition on a daily basis. Same can be said about people who have musical training. However, their training would be slightly different because they are specifically trained to ignore stimuli in their peripheral field of vision, (i.e. if a person is playing a musical piece off of a score they will likely ignore any stimuli that enter their peripheral field of vision because their musical task requires them to do so).
Well, now that I've talked all about that cool stuff, I think I'll go play a video game (Dragon Age 2) and see if this inhibition control stuff actually works when something enters my peripheral field of vision (gaming is another variable I'll be looking at... how cool is that?! Psychology and gaming together! ...you know you like it....)
If anyone's interested in learning more about what an antisaccade task or a similar study to mine is all about, you can check out this article.
Brown, M. R. G., Vilis, T., Everling, S. (2007). Frontoparietal Activation With Preparation for Antisaccades. Journal of Neurophysiology, 98, 1751-1762. doi: doi:10.1152/jn.00460.2007.
Ok, so basically we're using an antisaccade paradigm to measure people's inhibition. For those of you who don't know what that means, basically we get people look at a screen and fixate on a certain point (middle of the screen) where a small square appears. The square then moves either to the left or to the right after a fixation period of 200ms to 1500ms. The square turns either red or green before it moves and the fixation time is calculated from the moment the square changes colour to the moment it moves. The subject is instructed to either look toward the square (prosaccade) or look away from the square (antisaccade) depending on which colour the square turned. So for example, in one trial the if the square turns red, the subject is instructed to look towards the square, and if it turns green, the subject is instructed to look away from the square.
Now you might be wondering, "how does staring at little colour changing, moving squares measure inhibition?" Well the idea is that humans, along with other animals, have a automatic response to look toward a moving stimulus within their field of vision. Think of it this way, when you see something moving out of the corner of your eye, you look toward it, not away from it. So, the antisaccade task places a demand on the subject to stop the automatic response of looking toward a peripherally moving stimulus and make an active decision to look away from it.
Alright, so now lets get into the real question. Why might people with bilingual/musical experience have differences in their preparation for the antisaccade vs. the prosaccade? Meaning, why would these people have a difference in the time it takes them to make a decision for the antisaccade vs. the prosaccade? Well, the prosaccade should take very little time as it is an automatic response. So one would expect that prosaccades preparation times would be minimal for anyone, regardless of bilingual/musical experience. Its the antisaccade that's interesting because it not only requires an active inhibition of an automatic response but also a decision to carry out an action contrary to that automatic response. Basically, when making an antisaccade, we'd be using higher brain functions rather than simply autonomic/routine responses.
People with bilingual/musical training are specifically trained to do multiple things at once. In case of bilingual training, one would expect that anytime a person talks in the language they use least often, they would have to inhibit their impulse to use the language which they use more often. I know I have this problem sometimes when I speak Urdu with my mother. Even though Urdu is my native language (I'm South Asian and was raised in Pakistan) I still find that I sometimes it takes more effort to speak in Urdu rather than English because I only speak Urdu maybe 20% of the time and in under very specific situations (i.e. when talking to an elder South Asian family member). Now this ties into our previous discussion about antisaccades and inhibition because I have to inhibit my automatic tendency to want to speak in English anytime I speak in Urdu. Therefore, since I do this almost on a daily basis (for at least 20% of the time that I am using verbal communication), one would expect that I would be at least a little bit better at tasks that require the use of inhibitory control because I have more practice using inhibition on a daily basis. Same can be said about people who have musical training. However, their training would be slightly different because they are specifically trained to ignore stimuli in their peripheral field of vision, (i.e. if a person is playing a musical piece off of a score they will likely ignore any stimuli that enter their peripheral field of vision because their musical task requires them to do so).
Well, now that I've talked all about that cool stuff, I think I'll go play a video game (Dragon Age 2) and see if this inhibition control stuff actually works when something enters my peripheral field of vision (gaming is another variable I'll be looking at... how cool is that?! Psychology and gaming together! ...you know you like it....)
If anyone's interested in learning more about what an antisaccade task or a similar study to mine is all about, you can check out this article.
Brown, M. R. G., Vilis, T., Everling, S. (2007). Frontoparietal Activation With Preparation for Antisaccades. Journal of Neurophysiology, 98, 1751-1762. doi: doi:10.1152/jn.00460.2007.
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