Psychophysiology Lab

This lab is dedicated to research in personality and intelligence and to the training of undergraduate students on experimental methods in psychology with an emphasis on psychophysiological recording techniques.

Research

There are two current lines of research in the lab. The first project is aimed at understanding extraversion. The differences between introverts and extraverts in terms of sensory and motor activity is explored using different types of psychophysiological recording. the second project involves examining differences between individuals in cognitive ability. A comparison is made between standardized test scores and brain activity related to the automatic discrimination among tones.

Current Students

• Honours

  • Alexandra Smith (2012)

    • Alexandra will examine the relationship between intelligence and discrimination. She will focus on fluid intelligence as a distinct aspect of intellect, which represents an individual’s ability to recognize and comprehend patterns. She will use a matrices testto measure fluid intelligence. Discrimination will be evaluated using the mismatch negativity (MMN) an event-related potential (ERP) , which is derived from an EEG recording (for and explanation see: http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/research/eeg/mmnlang.html). The mismatch negativity is elicited when something different (louder or softer in this study) is presented in stream of tones. The MMN is a negative wave 100- 250 ms after the onset of the different tone. This measure reflects the innate ability to discriminate between tones even with without attending to them. Thus the research aims to examine this discrimination process and its relation to fluid intelligence.

• Independent Studies

  • Kristyn DesRoches

    • Kristyn has described her study as: Extraversion is often included in models of personality. Personality itself is a common area of interest to varying disciplines. Extraversion is classified as “sensation seeking, dominant, and venturesome”. Individuals are scored on a personality questionnaire (EPQ-R) to determine their classification as Introverts or Extraverts. While watching an animated film participants are exposed to continuous tones. One of the tones presented is considered the standard tone while the other is an unpredictable, deviant tone. This presentation of tones is meant to measure the participant’s unconscious response to the sounds. It is hypothesized that extraverts will not be as sensitive to the loudness of the tones and therefore, the readings of their brain waves will differ from introverts.

  • Lauren Morrissey

    • Intelligence or mental ability does not have a concrete definition. Mental ability includes aptitudes in areas such as information processing, memory, and recognition of patterns and relationships. While listening to a series of sounds participants’ brain waves will be measured, particularly those reflecting unconscious recognition of differences in the sounds. Cognitive matrices tasks will be compared to brain waves of participants. Typically those with higher mental ability express higher amplitude and shorter latency in this wave; it is expected that this will be the result of this study.

Current Volunteers

2011-2012

• Ian Davidson
• Anna Scheidler
• Annie Godbout
• Emily Thomas
• Markus Pearson
• Rodney Duplesis
• Michael Stafford

Advanced Biological Psychology Fall 2011

• The class completed a project examining the relation between brain activity and personality measures such as extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism, sensation seeking, agreeableness, contentiousness, and openeness.