News and Media

Congratulations Gray! One of our very own grad students Grayson Mullen received UBC’s 4-Year Doctoral Fellowships, one of UBC’s most prestigious awards! Congratulations!!

Kingstone awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowship Kingstone was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowship (University of Bristol, UK) for ~ £45,000 [October, 2022 – December, 2023].  These fellowships provide an opportunity for international research leaders to conduct research in the UK, to foster international collaborative links and enriching scientific research in the host organisation as well as the wider UK […]

Congratulations Natalie and team! Dr. Lori Brotto, Dr. Alan Kingstone, and trainee Natalie Brown were awarded funding through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Spring 2023 Project Grant competition! The funding will be used to test the efficacy of virtual reality exposure for vaginismus using a single case design. The team is seeking a postdoctoral fellow to co-lead this project. 

Congratulations Salina! Salina Edwards, former BAR Lab directed studies student and research assistant, will be starting her MSc in Neuroscience at McMaster University this fall! Salina will be supervised by Dr. Sukhvinder Obhi. 

Goodbye Farid! Farid Pazhoohi received a faculty position at the University of Plymouth and left for the UK! Farid was a Killam Post Doctoral Fellow with the lab from 2019 until 2023. Thank you for all your hard work. You will be missed! 

Advisory Board We are developing a study that will investigate attention in autism and are looking for autistic individuals to join an advisory board. We wish to gather input from the autistic community regarding study methods and protocols, as well as hearing what types of research questions about attention the community might have for us. You may […]

Congratulations to Shahrazad Amin for receiving an NSERC USRA! Shahrazad received the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award to conduct research with the BAR Lab for the summer of 2023. 

Amina and Salina represent the BAR Lab at PURC! Congratulations to Amina Abdelbary and Salina Edwards for presenting their work at the 25th Annual UBC Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference (PURC)!  Amina presented her honours thesis “Exploring Environments in VR: The Relationship Between Awe and Time Perception” and Salina presented her Directed Studies work titled “Picturing the Cost of Abstraction: Mind Perception Changes across Digital […]

PsychFest 2023 Master’s student Grayson Mullen presented his work on time estimation in virtual reality. He won the award for most surprising result. Great job! 

Leilani’s first paper as lead author! Leilani’s latest paper “Reading the room: Autistic traits, gaze behaviour, and the ability to infer social relationships” was just published in PLOS ONE. You can find the full journal article here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comments?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282310 Congratulations Leilani!

Congratulations to Brandon Forys for publishing his MA work! Congratulations to Brandon for defending his Master’s thesis last summer! His MA work, “Gender Impacts the Relationship between Mood Disorder Symptoms and Effortful Avoidance Performance“, has been published in eNeuro.   

Saying bye to Visiting Scholar, Lucas Haraped! Lucas is returning to Austria to complete his PhD after spending 6 months with us in Vancouver. Lucas is an exceptional lab member and overall wonderful person, and we look forward to seeing you again. Auf Wiedersehen!

Leilani named a UBC Public Scholar Our very own grad student, Leilani Forby, has been featured by the UBC Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies as she was recently named a Public Scholar at UBC. Check out the story here: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/campus-community/meet-our-students/forby-leilani

BAR Lab Retreat On August 15th, 12 alumni from the BAR Lab were invited to speak about their non-academic career journeys after finishing their PhDs. Thanks to the alumni for sharing their experiences!

Congratulations to Natalie Brown for new research funding! Natalie is a co-applicant on two new awards, the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute Innovation and Translation Research Award ($75,000) and the Health Innovation Funding Investment Awards ($25,000)! This funding is for the project “Application of Virtual Reality and Concurrent Psychoeducation to Address Vaginismus: Fear of Sexual Activity.” She received this award alongside Dr. Lori […]

Congrats to Han-Jiun Ke! Han-Jiun received the Faculty of Medicine Summer Student Research Program (FoM SSRP) via the Lillian and Thomas Embling Memorial Endowment Fund and Interior Health Authority this summer. Great job!

BAR Lab in the press! New interview featuring work done by our very own Dr. Alan Kingstone and Dr. Veronica Dudarev, “Why wearing sunglasses is more than just cool? The social power of concealing your eyes from others.” You can find the article here: https://psych.ubc.ca/news/looking-patterns-in-the-presence-of-people/

Introducing new lab member Thomas! Thomas Robert joined the lab in late May. His favourite activities include eating, looking around, and napping with his older brother Teddy. Huge congratulations to Nicki and Mark!!

Congratulations to Olive Huang for receiving the Quinn Research Assistantship! Olive received the Quinn to conduct research with the BAR Lab for the summer of 2022.

Upcoming conference: Understanding Vision The Understanding Vision Conference is happening on June 24th, 2022. There is still time to register to join the events which are open to all. The schedule can be found online here. Two of the guest speakers will be our very own Alan and Walter! For more information, please visit the Understanding Vision Conference website: […]

Congratulations to Leilani for her first journal publication, co-authored with Farid! The paper, titled “Facial Masks Affect Emotion Recognition in the General Population and Individuals with Autistic Traits“, is published in the journal PLOS One. Congrats to Leilani and Farid!

The Medusa Effect Congratulations to Paris Will and her co-authors on their recently published paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences! For a summary of the findings, check out the press release here. To read the entire paper, click here.

Congrats to Oliver Jacobs for receiving the Killam Doctoral Scholarship! Oliver Jacobs won a Killam Doctoral Scholarship and an NSERC doctoral postgraduate scholarship! Find out more here!

Natalie Brown won a prestigious CIHR award! Natalie Brown won a prestigious CIHR Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral Award. Congrats Natalie!

Congratulations to Jake Gerlofs for receiving an NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship! Congratulations to Jake Gerlofs for receiving the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship for doctoral studies!

Congratulations to Grayson Mullen for publishing a paper as first-author! Congratulations to Grayson Mullen, a new graduate student in the BAR Lab, for recently publishing a paper! The paper, titled “Time Compression in Virtual Reality”, can be found here!

Congrats to Dr. Alex DiGiacomo for passing her PhD defence with flying colours! Alex is starting a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Mood and Anxiety Disorders at BC Children’s Hospital & will also be working as an associate at Cornerstone Child and Family Psychology Clinic https://cornerstonepsychology.ca/

TWO New Publications! Congrats Nicki, Alan, & Walter! Not only one, but TWO new exciting Journal of Vision publications using Virtual Reality to investigate eye & head movements!! Click to see Article #1 & Article #2

Congrats to Oliver, Natalie & Leilani! 4-Year Doctoral Fellowships!! Not just one, but THREE of our grad students just received one of UBC’s most prestigious awards! Amazing!!!

Congrats on officially becoming Dr. Jill Dosso!!! Jill will be joining the NEST lab at BC Children’s hospital as a PostDoc where she’ll work with families to understand how social robotics & other smart technologies might function in healthcare.

New Publication! Covert attention in human social interactions. We had participants spy on each other! UBC Psych department’s article: https://psych.ubc.ca/news/i-spy-without-my-eye-qa-with-jill-dosso-about-covert-attention-in-human-social-interactions/

New Publication: Similar social presence effects when reaching for real and digital objects. Congrats to Katherine, Natalie, & Jane for their FIRST publication, with a big shoutout to Jill for being such a great mentor to the undergrad RAs!!

UBC Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award 2020: Congrats Jill!!! Nominated & selected from ~2000 TAs, Jill is the recipient of this prestigious award for her outstanding contributions to teaching & learning at UBC! She is just all-round an absolute pleasure to work with & we are all lucky to have her at BARlab 🙂

Congrats to Alex! Alex DiGiacomo has secured a 1-year Post-Doc Fellowship at the Mood & Anxiety Disorders Program for the UBC Department of Psychiatry. Congrats Alex!

2020 Donald O.Hebb Distinguished Contribution Award Winner: Dr. Alan Kingstone! Our amazing BAR Lab Director as this year’s award winner from the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, & Cognitive Science!

New term, new lab members! This September the BAR lab welcomes new MA student (Jake Gerlofs), post-doc (Farid Pazhoohi) and University of Essex Phd student visitor (Jess Dawson)! Looking forward to a productive term 🙂

Research from the BARLab shows how thinking and behaviour differs in virtual reality and real life The findings of this study have been covered in multiple news articles, read about it in Engineering & Technology, Science Daily, UBC News, and SUNY Poly News.

Funding for ongoing research An NSERC Engage grant for research collaboration between Telus and the BARlab has just been funded. Looking forward to the exciting work linking our research to an industry partner! Post-doc Basil Wahn was successful in a DFG Grant, providing him with two years of funding for his work in the lab. Congrats, Basil!!

Welcome to our new lab members In Fall 2018 three new MA students joined the lab. A big welcome to Leilani, Oliver and Nat!

Live interview by our very own Alessandra DiGiacomo Congratulations to Alessandra for her fantastic live interview on Saturday morning! Alessandra’s work on bin convenience increasing recycling and composting rates was recently published and his catching quite a bit of attention. Amazing work! You can watch the interview here: http://globalnews.ca/video/3398946/boosting-recycling-and-composting-rates-is-as-easy-as-proximity/

Making bins more convenient improves composting & recycling rates Alessandra DiGiacomo is lead author of a study that found placing bins 1.5 metres from a door drastically boosts recycling and composting rates by 141 per cent.

Congratulations to lab undergrad RAs A big congrats to former lab RA Austin Rothwell, who recently was awarded the Wesbrook Scholar designation. And to current lab RA, Daniil Vasilyev, who received an NSERC USRA to conduct research in the lab over the summer. Way to go!

Testing new VR equipment While testing some of our new VR equipment we gave Julian, one of our research assistants, quite a scare! Here we are using a very simple VR headset with a smartphone to show Julian a VR ghost story.  Click on the link below to view his reaction: VR testing

Recruiting Volunteer Research Assistants The Brain, Attention and Reality Lab is looking for enthusiastic and motivated students to volunteer with us!  General expectations for volunteer Research Assistants include recruiting and scheduling research participants, literature reviews, coding, data entry and other admin tasks in the lab. If you are interested in volunteering as a research assistant, please email a resume, a […]

2 Postdoctoral Positions Postdoctoral Position: Social Attention in Real and Virtual Environments  Applications are invited for a postdoctoral position in the research lab of Alan Kingstone – Brain, Attention and Reality lab – at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. The BarLab is looking for an independent, team-oriented, individual to spearhead a program of research investigating human […]

Congratulations Grayden! We are thrilled for Grayden Solman who leaves today, with Sabrina Diemert (and their two cats), to take up an Assistant Professor research faculty position at the University of Hawaii.  We’re going to miss you Grayden!  (Until of course we all come to visit.)

Are you talking to me? New research shows attention shapes social behaviours New research from our very own Kaitlin Laidlaw, with co-authors Austin Rothwell and Alan Kingstone, is the first to show that covert attention, such as paying attention out of the corner of your eye, is critical to guiding appropriate looking behaviour when we’re around other people. The paper “Camouflaged attention: Covert attention is critical to social […]

Kaitlin Laidlaw is back in the lab! Alas, only for this last week of May.  Come watch walk across the stage on Friday!  If you can’t be there in person, you can watch it here: http://graduation.ok.ubc.ca/event/live-webcast/

Welcome to Julien Lambert-Song Julien, who will be graduating next year from Laval University, joins our lab this summer having secured a prestigious NSERC USRA.

Walter is back in town! Walter Bischof is back in the lab for a sustained visit for the months of May and June. As always, he can be found almost at any time of the day working in the lab….

Congratulations Jill! PhD student Jill Dosso successfully defended her comprehensive examinations and proposal this week! She is our newest PhD candidate, so very well deserved! Congratulations Jill 🙂

Congratulations Kaitlin! We are very happy to announce that Dr. Kaitlin Laidlaw was selected as the 2015 winner of the Belkin Prize for Best Doctoral Dissertation. Congratulations on your excellent work!  

Congratulations, Quentin! Research Assistant, Quentin Raffaeli, recently received the Distinguished Undergraduate Research Award (DURA), an award recognizing his strong display of research experience as an undergraduate! Thanks, Quentin, for your hard work in the lab 🙂

Congratulations Dr. Laidlaw! BAR Lab member Kaitlin Laidlaw passed her Ph.D. defense on November 6th, with flying colours! She’s set a new bar for the rest of the lab with an outstanding presentation, hard work and determination. Kaitlin will be heading to the Western University to complete a post-doc under the supervision of Dr. Goodale and Dr. Culham. […]

You better watch out, You better not cry… Walter Bischof is coming to town! He’ll be in Vancouver from April 24 – May 15th. ALSO – Congratulations to Walter for receiving a 5 year NSERC Discovery Grant here at UBC! !

Tom Foulsham is in town! Tom is visiting from the University of Essex and will be in the BARLab for a couple of weeks. While here he’ll be completing some current research projects as well as starting up some new ones. Be sure to take advantage of the opportunity to hang out with Tom while he’s here!

Matt Gobel will be visiting us on Feb 16/17 (M/Tu) Matt is a PhD student with Daniel Richardson (see his sweet new paper in Cognition, Vol 136, pp. 359–364).  He’ll be giving an informal talk one of the two days he’s here; probably on Monday.  Stay tuned…

In the news – Paper by Joe and Evan Recently it was brought to my attention that there was a story on their leaning paper. See the link below. http://bodylanguageproject.com/articles/leaning-in-versus-leaning-out-what-does-it-mean-a-study-unlocks-more-clues-behind-the-brain-body-link/

A Green Subconscious Sustainability research by Alessandra DiGiacomo (left), David Wu and Prof. Alan Kingstone is featured in Connected by Commitment, UBC’s 2013/14 Annual Report.

Recycling Bin Redesign: collaboration between the BAR Lab and Emily Carr University (September 4, 2014) The BAR Lab has collaborated with Emily Carr University design students on a Recycling Bin Redesign project organized by Metro Vancouver. To learn more about this exciting initiative read the article and watch the video here.

New research on eye-tracking devices sheds light on the implications of wearable technologies (August 6, 2014) Wearers of smart glasses such as Google Glass can easily forget they’re recording what they see and despite the best of intentions, can violate other people’s privacy. That’s the suggestion of new research out of the Brain and Attention Lab in the University of British Columbia’s Dept. of Psychology. For a study just […]

David, Alex and Alan’s work on sustainability a feature story in UBC’s 2013/2014 annual report (July 28, 2014) To assist the UBC Campus Sustainability Sort it Out program and to underline the campus as a ‘living lab’, our researchers in the BAR Lab monitored the recycling outcomes at two popular eating areas in two very differently designed buildings on the Vancouver campus: the Student Union Building (SUB) and the Centre […]