2020-2025
Highlights 2024-2025
Psychonomics Conference - November 2024
A few members of the A&SC Lab made the trek down to New York City to present their research at Psychonomics 2024!
Jessica Savoie's poster: Quorum-Like Evaluation of Visual Information Consistency
Visit from Roxane Itier - November 2024
Prof. Roxane Itier from the University of Waterloo stopped by the A&SC Lab! Here she is with some of our graduate & undergraduate students:
Prof. Ristic delivers a TedX Presentation - October 2024
Prof. Ristic delivers a TedX Presentation titled "Eyes Speak Louder than Words" for the HBHL Amazing Brain Series.
- Watch Dr. Ristic's talk on YouTube
- Consult playlist of the Amazing Brain videos
Highlights 2023-2024
We moved labs - July 2024
After many years, the A&SC Lab has moved from the Stewart Biology Building to 2001 McGill College. Here's some pictures of our new workspace. Thank you N6/7 Stewart Bio for your years of service!
Highlights 2022-2023
2023 CSBBCS Mid-Career Award Winner: Dr. Jelena Ristic - July 2023
At the recent conference, Dr. Ristic received the 2023 CSBBCS Mid-Career Award. Read more about Dr. Ristic and why she was selected.
Vision Sciences Society (VSS) - May 2023
Dr. Ristic Presented her research at this year's VSS conference in St. Pete Beach in Florida.
Consult her poster:
Cognitive Science Poster Day - April 2023
Christy Shao (left) and Phoebe Zhao (right) presenting at McGill's Annual Cognitive Science Poster Day.
Psychology Department Poster Day - April 2023
Coco Jie Wang (top left), Yedda Lam (top right), Alice Zhang (bottom left), and Claire Wei (bottom right) presenting at McGill's annual undergraduate poster day!
Professor Jelena Ristic Honoured at the 2023 Bravo Gala
Dr. Jelena Ristic was Honoured at McGill's 2023 Bravo Gala celebrating McGill's faculty members and researchers who have recently been awarded external prizes for outstanding research. Dr. Ristic was recognized for being named a fellow of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science. Consult the Bravo 2023 site for more information.
Luowei Yan Awarded NSERC-CGSM Award and NSERC-CREATE Masters Fellowship - April 2023
Our graduate student Luowei Yan was awarded the NSERC-CGSM Award as well as the NSERCE-CREATE Masters Fellowship. Congratulations!
McGill Faculty of Science Undergraduate Poster Showcase - March 2023
Several members of our lab presented their thesis projects at this year's faculty of science poster showcase. One of our lab members Coco Jie Wang was interviewed.
Photo (Left to right): Coco Jie Wang and Dr. Sarah McCrackin
Photo (Left to right): Florence Mayrand, Claire Wei and Dr. Sarah McCrackin
Photo (Left to right): Phoebe Zhao and Dr. Sarah McCrackin
Photo: Students consulting posters
Skip to 1:49:50 to watch Coco's interview.
Psychonomics Conference - November 2022
Dr. Jelena Ristic and Florence Mayrand attended the 2022 Psychonomics conference. Dr. Ristic gave a talk titled "Perceptual grouping of social interactions: From dyads to triads" (first photo). Florence Mayrand presented her poster on the effect of perceptual display variability on Mentalistic and Directional aspects of Gaze Following (second photo).
Perceptual grouping of social interactions: From dyads to triads
Perceptual Display Variability does not modulate the Mentalistic and Directional aspects of Gaze Following
Dr. Sarah McCrackin and Florence Mayrand Receive Awards from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) - September 2022
Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Sarah McCrackin was awarded an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship award, and PhD candidate Florence Mayrand was awarded a Postgraduate Doctoral Scholarship award. Congratulations!
European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCOP) Conference - August - September 2022
Dr. Sarah McCrackin attended the 2022 ESCOP Conference in Lille, France. She presented her talk titled "Putting up a wall: Occlusion of the eye and mouth regions reduces the ability to recognize, infer, and share emotional states."
Dr. Jelena Ristic named Fellow of the Canadian Society for Brain Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS) - July 2022
This distinction is awarded to CSBBCS active members who made significant scientific contributions to the study of brain, behaviour, and cognitive science and to the training of highly qualified personnel, as well as having been involved with granting agencies and journals. Congratulations!
The Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS) Conference - July 2022
Dr. Sarah McCrackin and Florence Mayrand attended the CSBBCS 2022 conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dr. Sarah McCrackin presented her poster titled "The Cone of Direct Gaze can be reliably measured online using the Virtual Chin Rest" (first photo). Florence Mayrand presented her poster titled "The role of gaze direction and mental content in social orienting: An eye tracking investigation" (second photo).
The Cone of Direct Gaze can be reliably measured online using the Virtual Chin Rest
The role of gaze direction and mental content in social orienting: An eye tracking investigation
Highlights 2021-22
Vision Sciences Society (VSS & V-VSS) Conference - May/June 2022
Dr. Jelena Ristic, Dr. Sarah McCrackin, Dr. Effie Pereira, Florence Mayrand, and Victoria Fratino attended the 2022 Conference! Dr. Jelena Ristic presented a poster on face occlusion and communication (first photo). Dr. Sarah McCrackin presented a poster on eye occlusion and emotions (second photo) and a poster on the effect of facemasks on emotion recognition (third photo). Dr. Effie Pereira presented a poster on faces and attention (fourth photo). Florence Mayrand presented a poster on gaze following (fifth photo). Victoria Fratino presented a poster on the perceptual unity of social groups (sixth photo).
Occluding face parts impacts human social communication
Occluding the eye-region impacts inferring and sharing a face’s emotional state
Recognition of emotions is affected by face masks
Faces may not be special for attention after all
Gaze following from another’s perspective
From dyads to triads: Perceptual unity of social groups
Social & Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS) Conference - May 2022
Dr. Sarah McCracking attended the SANS 2022 virtual conference. She presented a poster on the effect of facemasks on social availability which is moderated by the available appropriate emotional context.
The negative impact of face occlusion by masks on social communication
Undergraduate Student Conference
Victoria Fratino (top left), Leila Rafai (top right), Nada Khalil (middle left), Yilin Guo (middle right), India Audet (bottom left), & Kylie Chow (bottom right) presenting at McGill's Annual Undergraduate Psychology Conference!
In the spotlight: Face masks impair recognition of emotions
Recent research from ASC group shows that wearing face masks impairs human social communication (McCrackin, S.D., Capozzi, F., Mayrand, F., Ristic, J. (2022). Face Masks Impair Basic Emotion Recognition. Social Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000470).
The social landscape underwent rapid change with the worldwide onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. One of the biggest changes was a widespread adoption of face masks. While wearing a mask is critical in preventing the spread of covid, it’s important that we understand the impact masks can have on social interactions. Dr McCrackin, Dr Ristic and the team from the ASC group investigated how facial emotion recognition is affected by mask wearing. We asked participants to identify happy, angry, fearful, sad, surprised, disgusted, and neutral emotional expressions from masked and unmasked face images. Participants also completed two questionnaires to assess if the impact of masks on emotion recognition was related to self-reported social competence and personality traits. We showed that recognition of all basic facial expressions is strikingly impaired by face masks. While the impact of masks on emotion recognition was largely consistent, there was some variation observed across individuals. Specifically, while those with lower social competence had worse emotion recognition for unmasked faces, those with higher trait agreeableness and lower trait extraversion had better emotion recognition for masked faces. Our results suggest that this basic form of nonverbal communication is heavily impacted by face masks and this could be contributing to some of the feelings of isolation and loneliness that many have experienced during the pandemic.
The Annual Harvard Women in Psychology, Trends in Psychology Summit (TiPs) - November 2021
Dr. Sarah McCrackin, Florence Mayrand, and Victoria Fratino attended the Annual Harvard Trends in Psychology Summit. Florence Mayrand (first video) presented her talk on "Looking while Speaking and Looking while Listening in Dyadic Interactions." Victoria Fratino (second video) presented the talk, "Two is Company, Three is a Crowd: The Perceptual Unity of Dyads and Small Groups." Dr. Sarah McCrackin (third photo) presented her poster, "I can't see it in your eyes: occluding as individual's eye-region impacts the ability to infer and share their emotional state."
Psychonomics Conference - November 2021
Dr. Sarah McCrackin and Florence Mayrand attended the 2021 Psychonomics Conference. Dr. Sarah McCrackin (first video) presented a talk on how gaze signals include complex representations of other people's minds. Florence Mayrand (second photo) presented her poster "Social Attention is modulated by Reciprocal Looking Behaviors during Social Interactions."
Social Attention is modulated by Reciprocal Looking Behaviors during Social Interactions
The Object perception, visual Attention, and visual Memory (OPAM) Conference - November 2021
Dr. Sarah McCrackin attended the OPAM 2021 Virtual Conference and presented a talk on how the mental aspect of social orienting is associated with individual perspective perspective taking abilities.
The Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS) Conference - June 2021
Dr. Sarah McCrackin, Florence Mayrand, and Victoria Fratino attended the CSBBCS 2021 Virtual Conference. Dr. McCrackin (first and second video) presented a talk on how individual differences in social competence and personality traits modulate emotion recognition from masked faces. Florence Mayrand (third photo) presented her poster "Interactive and noninteractive gaze exchanges during real life interactions". Victoria Fratino presented her poster, "Two is Company, Three is a Crowd: The Perceptual Unity of Dyads and Small Groups" (fourth photo) on the perceptual unity of triads.
Interactive and non interactive gaze exchanges during real life dyadic interactions
Two is Company, Three is a Crowd: Perceptual Groupings of Small Groups
Highlights 2020-21
Vision Sciences Society (VSS) Virtual Conference - May 2021
Dr. Sarah McCrackin and Florence Mayrand attended the VSS 2021 Virtual Conference! Dr. Sarah McCrackin presented a poster on how the recognition of emotions is affected by face masks (first photo). Florence Mayrand presented a poster on how both cue directionality and mental perspective contribute to social attention (second photo).
Recognition of emotions is affected by face masks
Both Cue Directionality and Mental Perspective Contribute to Social Attention
Undergraduate Poster Day - April 2021
Congratulations to our undergraduates Miriam Cheety (first picture), Sabrina Provencher (second photo), Victoria Fratino (third picture), and Julie-Ann Di Blasio (fourth picture) for a great job on their poster presentations!
Recognizing Groups in a Crowd
Individual Differences in Recognizing Emotions with Face Masks
Two is Company, Three is a Crowd: Perceptual Grouping of Small Groups
Social Orienting: Driven Both By Directionality and Visual Perspective Taking
Celebration for Dr. Francesca Capozzi - April 2021
Congratulations to Dr. Francesca Capozzi (top row, 2nd to right) who is starting a new chapter of her career in clinical psychology. We will miss her greatly but wish her the best of luck in her clinical training at McGill University for Couple and Family Therapy. We gifted Francesca a custom A&SC mug. We also surprised our lab coordinator Jessica Haight (top row, 2nd to left) with a custom A&SC mug. Jessica is departing to start a graduate program in public health at the University of Alberta.
Celebration for Dr. Effie Pereira - November 2020
Congratulations to Dr. Effie Pereira (far left, 2nd from top) who recently completed her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at McGill! We had a celebration over Zoom and surprised her with a mug customized with our A&SC logo. We wish her the best of luck in starting a new chapter at the University of Waterloo working with Dr. Daniel Smilek in the Vision & Attention Laboratory.
New Paper - November 2020
Dr. Francesca Capozzi, Dr. Basil Wahn, Dr. Jelena Ristic, and Dr. Alan Kingstone's article "Prior attentional bias is modulated by social gaze," published in Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, looks into whether or not the influence of the gaze of others can bias one's attention to environmental cues.
New Publication - October 2020
Dr. Francesca Capozzi, Dr. Nida Latif, Emma Ponath, and Dr. Jelena Ristic's publication, "Auditory and visual information affect social segmentation differently," in the Journal of Vision, looks at the role of perceptual modalities in how people differentiate social and non-social information in the environment.
Let's Talk Science publication - 2020
Let's Talk Science is a charitable organization that works to support Canadian youth in pursuit of STEM education. Dr. Sarah McCrackin has teamed up with Let's Talk Science for talks and workshops at schools, libraries, and community centres. Most recently, Sarah published an article, "Facial Recognition and the Brain," which provides engaging and interactive information on how brains process faces. She explains how you might even see a smiling face on a car (picture below).
Sarah McCrackin joined the lab - October 2020
Dr. Sarah McCrackin joined us from the University of Waterloo where she completed her Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience.
She studied how people use the information from the eye-gaze of others to relate to them on an emotional level.
We are excited to have her with us!
Article Featured in Character & Context - September 2020
Dr. Francesca Capozzi, Dr. Jelena Ristic, and Dr. Lauren Human’s article “Attention promotes accurate impression formation” was featured by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s blog, Character & Context. The article revealed that paying more attention to others was related to an increased ability to understand their personality. These results suggest that attention promotes social adaptation by supporting accurate social perception.
More than a glance: Understanding others better by paying more attention to them
Effie Pereira completed her Ph.D. Defence - August 2020
Dr. Effie Pereira completed her Ph.D. with a successful dissertation defence on the role of external factors on social attention, finding strong null effects for previously-studied face biases.
Effie Pereira is featured in promotional materials for Research Day - July 2020
Effie Pereira was featured on the cover of the promotional materials for the Virtual Healthy Brains and Healthy Lives Research Day, which showcases the research of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who are working in areas of HBHL’s goals and priorities.
2014-2020
- Highlights 2019-20
- Highlights 2018-19
- Highlights 2017-18
- Highlights 2016-17
- Highlights 2015-16
- Highlights 2014-15
Highlights 2019-20
In the Spotlight features Francesca Capozzi - March 2020
Dr. Francesca Capozzi was featured by In the Spotlight, a monthly series in which the McGill Psychology Department profiles graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The writer and interviewer was our very own, Effie Pereira! Francesca talks about her nonlinear path in academia and her work on the hidden social dynamics in group interactions.
“I am excited by the fact that I am one of the first researchers addressing these new issues of how attention works in groups and crowd.”
Psychonomics Conference - November 2019
Dr. Jelena Ristic, Dr. Francesca Capozzi, and Effie Pereira attended the 60th Annual Meeting for the Psychonomics Society in Montréal. Dr. Jelena Ristic (first photo) and Dr. Francesca Capozzi (second photo) presented the talk, "The Language of the Eyes: How Looking Behaviour Indexes Group Dynamics and Predicts Individual Socio-Cognitive Function." Effie Pereira (third photo) presented her poster, "Overt Social Attention Is Differentially Affected by Differences in Stimulus Content Information" on attention biasing towards social cues.
Object, Perception, Attention and Memory (OPAM) Conference – November 2019
Effie Pereira presented her poster, "Variability in the content of mind wandering is associated with intrinsic connectivity within the default network" at the 2019 OPAM Conference in Montréal. Effie presented her latest fMRI work looking at the relationship between the default network of our brain and the content of what we mind wander to.
Effie Received an Entrance Scholarship - September 2019
Effie Pereira received the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives Entrance Scholarship for IVADO/MILA Deep Learning School. The Learning School involved a deep dive into machine learning and deep learning techniques.
Article Featured in Science Trends - August 2019
Effie Pereira’s article, “Looking versus focusing on faces: What attracts our attention?” was featured in Science Trends. Thank you to Trevor Nace and Emily Spear, editors at Science Trends. Effie’s research shows that although spontaneous attention to faces may be less robust than we expected, it’s also much more complex than we realized!
Highlights 2018-19
Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS) Conference – June 2019
Effie Pereira and Dr. Francesca Capozzi attended the CSBBCS Conference in Waterloo. Effie Pereira (first photo) presented her talk, "Within-individual oscillatory patterns of mind wandering and attentive states are associated with functional life outcomes." Effie received the CSBBCS Hebb Student Award and runner-up for Best Oral Presentation! Francesca (second photo) presented "Standing out from the Crowd: Both social information and cue numerosity affect attention in multi-agent contexts."
Research Day – May 2019
Effie Pereira attended the Health Brains awarded the Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives (HBHL) Research Day and received the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) HBHL Award and Best Oral Presentation for her talk, “Within-individual oscillatory patterns in mind wandering and attentive states are associated with functional life outcomes." View her talk
Undergraduate Poster Day - April 2019
Yongyao (Carol) Li presenting her research on attention and faces at the Psychology Undergraduate Poster Day.
Symposium on Nonlinear Dynamics – August 2018
Effie Pereira presented her talk, "Oscillatory patterns of mind wandering predict real-world costs & benefits" at the Symposium on Nonlinear Dynamics in Montreal.
Highlights 2017-18
Vision Science Society conference in St. Pete Beach, Florida - May 2018
At the Vision Science Society Conference Effie Pereira (top right picture) presented her work on attentional selection of faces.
Francesca Capozzi (below) presented her work on the segmentation of social and non social events and Nida Latif (below) presented her work on social event segmentation related to perceptual and contextual information.
Dr. Jelena Ristic won the Women in Cognitive Science Mentorship Award - 2017
Dr. Jelena Ristic won the Women in Cognitive Science Mentorship Award for her many years of developing the research and publication skills of female graduate and undergraduate students in cognitive science.
The Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology Best Article Award - 2017
Dr. Jelena Ristic and her colleagues, Dr. Dana Hayward (lead author), Dr. Willa Voorhies, Dr. Jenna Morris and Dr. Francesca Capozzi, are the winners of the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 2017 Best Article Award for, “Staring Reality in the Face: A Comparison of Social Attention Across Laboratory and Real World Measures Suggest Little Common Ground.”
Psychonomic Conference, Vancouver - November 2017
Effie Pereira attended the 58th Annual Psychonomic Conference in Vancouver, BC and shared her research on mind wandering.
McGill's Rising Stars - September 2017
Francesca Capozzi participated in a networking event recognizing researchers who were recently granted the SSHRI Insight Development Grant.
Highlights 2016-17
Farewell party for Chris - June 2017
Congrats to Chris Blair who is joining Eastern Oregon University as an Assistant Professor.
Psychology Undergraduate Poster Day - April 2017
Congrats to our undergraduates, Yuqi Lin (first picture), Victoria Ledsham (second photo), Iman Lahouaoula (third picture) and Rachel Markham (fourth picture) for their poster presentations!
Cognitive Science Undergraduate Poster Day - April 2017
Congrats to our undergraduates, Olivia Larson (third picture) and Jackie Brown (fourth picture) for their poster presentations!
Arts Undergraduate Research Event - January 2017
Congratulations to Yun Lu for her poster presentation!
Highlights 2015-16
Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science - June 2016
See Lauri Gurguryan standing in front of her poster (second picture), Francesca Capozzi presenting (third picture), Effie Pereira presenting (fourth picture), and Chris Blair presenting (fifth picture) at the CSBBCS 2016 meeting in Ottawa, Ontario
Psychology Undergraduate Poster Day - April 2016
Congratulations to our undergraduates, Marianna Lau (third picture), Mona Li (fourth picture), Nicole (Seulman) Ahn (fifth picture, and Yun Lu (sixth picture).
Cognitive Science Undergraduate Research Day - April 2016
Congratulations to our undergraduates on their presentations!
Highlights 2014-15
Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science - July 2015
See Todd Vogel (first picture), Dana Hayward (second picture), and Effie Pereira (third picture) at the 2015 CSBBCS meeting in Ottawa, Ontario.
Vision Science Society - 2015
See Effie Pereira (first picture, left), Dana Hayward (first picture, middle), and Todd Vogel (first picture, right) at the 2015 VSS at St. Pete, Beach, Florida!
Psychology Undergraduate Poster Day - April 2015
Congratulations our undergraduates for their poster presentations!
