Helping socially-withdrawn Chinese children: The protective role ofparents

A three-wave longitudinal study will be conducted to examined the social, emotional, and academic implications of shyness and unsociability in Chinese children as well as the potential protective role that authoritative parenting plays. Participants in the initial sample consisted of 1500 grade 3 to 6 students, randomly selected from four primary and junior high schools in Shanghai. Assessment of shyness, unsociability, parenting practices, and adjustment are obtained from multiple sources, including peer nominations, self-reports, parent-reports, teacher-reports, and school records.

Brain changes after 1 year of treatment with an injectable antipsychotic in people with a first-episode psychosis.

The proposed project will explore variations in the whole brain after 1 year of treatment that may exist between those who are taking an injectable antipsychotic versus those who are taking an oral antipsychotic in a cohort of first-episode of psychosis. All patients are treated in a naturalistic, early intervention setting at the Douglas Institute in Montreal, Canada. Janssen will benefit from the proposed project as it will help determine the benefits, if any, for prescribing an injectable earlier on in treatment,
namely related to brain tissue change.

Web-based Goal Management Training™ in older adults with cognitive impairment: a randomized-controlled trial examining feasibility and efficacy

As the Canadian population is aging, more and more Canadians will show cognitive decline. Aging and certain types of neurological disorders is often associated with deficits in executive functions: goal maintenance, planning, task
switching and attention. These functions are critical for the maintenance of functional independence. Few validated rehabilitation approaches for these types of deficits exist. One rehabilitation approach, Goal Management Training™

Enhancement of a Pharmacogenomic Treatment Decision Support Tool for Schizophrenia

The GeneSight (GS) Psychotropic Test (AssureRx Health, Inc.) measures individual variations in drug-related genes and recommends optimal drug choices for individual patients. A clinical study will be conducted to validate novel gene markers of antipsychotic-induced weight gain for use in an enhanced version of GS. Sarah Groleau will be responsible for genotyping DNA from 600 schizophrenia patients to evaluate which of the significant gene variants (UofT/CAMH) predict the most troubling side effect of antipsychotic medications: weight gain and metabolic syndrome.

Real-time fatigue detection by remote eye tracking

Fatigue is a significant risk factor for operating moving vehicles in work settings that involve long duty hours or shift work rotations. A critical objective in fatigue management is to develop technology to establish fitness for duty, monitor fatigue in real time and predict performance failure. Eye movements (eyelid closure, blink rate and duration) are sensitive indicators of fatigue. Six Safety Systems has developed an eye tracking system that can monitor eye movements remotely.

Development and testing of an on-line video game to teach second languages

Copernicus Studios Inc. (CSI; Halifax, NS) is developing LANGA – disruptive LANguage GAming software to help people learn new languages. LANGA uses advanced speech recognition and high-end animation to create a unique and engaging gaming experience. However, LANGA is more than just flash – it has been developed in partnership with the NeuroCognitive Imaging Lab (NCIL) at Dalhousie University. This industrial-academic partnership was forged to ensure that the training programs are informed by research in second language learning, and that LANGA’s effectiveness has been validated in the lab.

Assessing team functional state in emergency response

The need for better measurement of emergency response teams has been recognized as one of the key challenges that characterize the field of team work studies. Ideally, when assessing team performance, one should combine information about the nature of the team (e.g., what is the team structure?) and about its members (e.g., is one of the member exhausted?). This challenge is particularly hard to address in the context of emergency response, due to the inherent complexity and dynamism of the domain. For instance, how do you assess team member’s level of fatigue when deployed in the field?

IMMERSe: the interactive and multi-modal experience research syndicate

The purpose of this project is to provide insight into how game-based learning can be used to motivate positive workplace behaviour and learning over time. The intern will work with an established industry partner that has deployed a game-based learning platform for the workplace, and analyze user performance and motivation data that the industry partner has gathered from their platform.

Investigating the empowerment of teachers and studentsat Northern Canadian schools throughtelecommunication technology

The proposed research project investigates how the Telepresence technology (Connected North) has an impact on Northern students’ and teachers’ educational experience. Our goal is to assess the impact of its implementation within three contexts: connecting students to students, connecting students to experts, and connecting teachers to teachers. To this end, we will administer questionnaires to teachers and students before and after the introduction of the technology, as well as compare groups who experience versus do not experience the technology for a particular curriculum unit.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Knewton's Adaptive Learning Technology Year Two

I will be involved in two different projects with Pearson Education, 1) evaluate Knewton’s adaptive learningtechnology, and 2) assess the efficacy and improve the quality of the existing assessment tools and items. My proposalwill focus on the first project.The goal of the project is to evaluate the effectiveness and pedagogical values of Knewton’s adaptive learningtechnology, a technology meant to differentially help students depending on their needs.

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