2024 Events
April 25, 2024 – Virtual Research Talk
April 25, 2024 – Virtual Research Talk with Dr. Lara Pierce and Lab.
Talk Description: Strong ties have been established between socioeconomic status (SES), early life stress, and neurodevelopmental outcomes. However, mechanisms by which specific variables within a low-SES context shape distinct neural processes underlying the development of complex abilities (e.g., language, executive function) are less well understood. Using longitudinal samples of infants experiencing low- to mid-SES, we will discuss both recent data and new project ideas that aim to test associations between SES-related variables (e.g., early life stress, caregiver-child interactions, language context) and infant neurodevelopment in multiple domains (e.g., language processing, joint attention, global cortical maturation). Results to date suggest that SES-related variables uniquely predict neural processes across a variety of tasks, facilitating efforts to mechanistically connect early experience with downstream effects.
Zoom Link : https://yorku.zoom.us/j/95499825109
2023 Events
December 6, 2023 – Research Talk
December 6, 2023 – Research Talk with Heather Prime and students, Jazzmin Demy, Oana Bucsea, Alexandra Markwell.
Presentation Title: COVID-19 and Child and Family Well-Being: What We Know and Why We Care by Dr. Heather Prime. Dr. Prime talks about families’ lives that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that shaped all individuals and relationships within the family. The shadow of the pandemic remains, requiring concerted efforts for family-centered recovery and preparation for future challenges. The current talk will present an overview of a theoretical framework and empirical support for how the pandemic “got inside families” to disrupt relationships and well-being. We then present two empirical studies of pandemic effects in family subsystems that are often overlooked in family research—the interparental and sibling relationships—with a focus on reciprocal influences in family spillover. Finally, we present a knowledge mobilization initiative in the lab dedicated to translating pandemic research to the general public and relevant professionals, to support recovery and plan for the future.
2022 Events
February 17, 2022 – Faculty Members & Graduate Students Talk
February 17, 2022 – Faculty Members & Graduate Students Talk with Dr. Rebecca Bassett-Gunter and Julia Ferreira Gomes.
Presentation Title: A community-based approach to establishing evidence-based recommendations for physical activity information targeting parents of children with disabilities by Dr. Rebecca Bassett-Gunter. Rebecca will discuss her on-going community-based research program which has followed the AGREE-II standards to establish recommendations for developing physical activity information targeting parents of children with disabilities. She will share successes, lessons learned and next steps for moving forward with implementing recommendations for targeted and inclusive physical activity promotion.
Dr. Rebecca Bassett-Gunter’s research is focused on understanding the promotion of health behaviours and the development of optimally effective health promotion messages targeting psychosocial predictors of behaviour. Her work is particularly focused on physical activity promotion among children and youth with disabilities. She is focused on understanding the role of supportive others such as parents, teachers and coaches, in promoting physical activity among children and youth. Her work is grounded within an integrated knowledge translation approach whereby she works to engage community partners in her research program.
Presentation Title: Exploring the Utility of Virtual Trauma-and Violence-Informed Sport for Development (TVISFD) Programs with Maple Leaf Sport and Entertainment’s LaunchPad in Moss Park, Toronto: A community-based participatory approach by Julia Ferreira Gomes.
Julia Ferreira Gomes is a Graduate Research Assistant in the Faculty of Health at York University and MSc student (Thesis-based) in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science, under supervisor Dr. Lyndsay Hayhurst. She integrates sociopolitical and health equity perspectives into her work in applied kinesiology & health research. She is committed to understanding and addressing health inequities in Canada and abroad. Skilled in qualitative and quantitative research methodology.
January 20, 2022 – Faculty Members & Graduate Students Talk
January 20, 2022 – Faculty Members & Graduate Students Talk with Dr. Maggie Toplak.
Presentation Title: Progress in the study of judgment and decision-making in developmental samples: Next steps in the research and implications for youth. Dr. Maggie Toplak’s research focuses on judgment, decision-making and rational thinking, including their associations with individual differences in cognitive abilities and performance-based measures of executive function. Most recently, she has conducted a 9 year longitudinal study to examine the developmental trajectories of these competencies. Her research has been informed by using participants across the lifespan and with special populations, including youth with ADHD, young offenders and pathological gamblers.
2021 Events
November 16, 2021 – LaMarsh Faculty Members & Graduate Students Talk
November 16, 2021 – LaMarsh Faculty Members & Graduate Students Talk: Partnering with Communities Globally and Locally to Reduce HIV Stigma among Youth with Dr. Tiffany Chenneville. During this talk, Dr. Chenneville will present findings from the HIV SEERs Project, a community-based participatory research project designed to reduce HIV stigma among youth.
Dr. Tiffany Chenneville is visiting as a Fulbright Canada Research Chair in the Department of Psychology at York University during the Fall semester. She is the Marie E. and E. Leslie Cole Endowed Chair in Ethics and Professor of Psychology at the University of South Florida (USF). She holds a Joint Appointment in the USF Department of Pediatrics where she serves as a Behavioral Health Consultant for the Pediatric and Adolescent Infectious Disease Program, which provides services to children and youth living with HIV in an integrated care setting. Dr. Chenneville’s primary program of research is in the area of pediatric and adolescent HIV with a focus on the psychosocial issues affecting children and youth living with perinatally or behaviorally acquired HIV. Dr. Chenneville prioritizes issues related to ethics with a particular emphasis on the decisional capacity of children with HIV to participate in treatment and research along with global research ethics. She also engages in community-based participatory research on HIV-related stigma among youth. Because HIV is a global disease, Dr. Chenneville is interested in cross-cultural research and has collaborated with colleagues on research in Kenya, South Africa, India, and the UK.
October 28, 2021 – LaMarsh Faculty & Graduate Seminar/Talks
October 28, 2021 – LaMarsh Faculty & Graduate Seminar/Talks with Melissa Major and Tracy Fabri.
Melissa Major identifies as a Métis researcher who takes a relational approach to positive youth development and equity studies in transcultural clinical-developmental psychology. Her current work with Dr. Debra Pepler, her superior, includes mapping Indigenous historical trauma in Canada, evaluating a culturally embedded Inuit youth wellness program, describing how moments of love and warmth support the development of Indigenous girls in an Anishinaabe family care service, and exploring hope as one of the benefits of a culturally embedded Anishinaabe substance use rehabilitation program.
Tracy Fabri is a PhD student in Dr. Christine Till’s lab. Her research interests include cognitive/neuropsychological outcomes following insult to the developing brain due to demyelinating disease (i.e., pediatric-onset multiple sclerosis and myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody disease) and traumatic injury (e.g., concussion). Tracy has received generous funding from the LaMarsh Centre for Child and Youth Research, Dr. Eric Jackman, The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, and OGS. Her doctoral research is supported by a CIHR Banting and Best award. The research she will be presenting was collected as part of the Canadian Pediatric Demyelinating Disease Study.
2019 Events
May, 2019 – LaMarsh Research Lab Session
May, 2019 – LaMarsh Research Lab Session with Visiting Scholar Professor M. Angeles Cerezo: “New approaches to maternal sensitivity: child attachment predictors and practical implications”. Professor Cerezo is Chair of Psychology at the University of Valencia. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Madrid. As a Fulbright Scholar, she received her post-doctoral research training on the topic of parenting and parent-child interaction with disadvantaged families at the Child Behaviour Institute with Dr. Robert G. Wahler at the University of Tennessee, U.S.A. Dr. Cerezo’s most recent publication: Cerezo, M.A. Pons-Salvador, G., Trenado, R.M. & Sierra-Garcia, P. (2019). The temporal dimension in maternal sensitivity predicting organized attachment in children: a non-linear dynamic perspective. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, 23(1), 1377-171.
March, 2019 – Student Wellness Workshop
March, 2019 – Student Wellness Workshop: “Are you feeling Burned Out?” – A student-engagement workshop coordinated by the LaMarsh Leadership Representatives, Bianca Bondi, Attia Khan and Justeena Zaki-Azat.
Dr. Louise Hartley, York University Psychology Clinic, “Student Burnout and Self-Care.
Dr. Gordon Flett, LaMarsh Research Centre, “The Cost of Perfectionism in Students: How to combat burnout, procrastination and underachievement Michael Sa’d, York University Counseling & Disability
Ben Diplock, Graduate Student, “Mindfulness-Based Meditation”
February, 2019 – LaMarsh Talk
February, 2019 – LaMarsh Talk: Dr. Jonathan Weiss, Psychology Department, Faculty of Health: “Supporting mental health in people with autism: science and practice”.
February, 2019 – LaMarsh Talk:
February, 2019 – LaMarsh Talk: Dr. Nazilla Khanlou and Dr. Attia Khan, (Ph.D. candidate): “The barriers and challenges of racialized and immigrant families with children and youth with developmental disabilities”.
2018 Events
October, 2018 – LaMarsh Talk
October, 2018 – LaMarsh Talk: Adam Akpik “Inuit Awareness: History and Cultural Competency.” Adam Akpik was born and raised in Iqaluit, Nunavut and graduated from Nunavut Sivuniksavut in 2016, an Advanced Inuit Studies college program affiliated with Algonquin College and located in Ottawa. He currently works for the Inuusiq – Embrace Life Council, a territorial life promotion organization that provides suicide prevention, postvention and intervention training, with the mission of encouraging the people of Nunavut to value and embrace life. Adam is also highly engaged and passionate about Inuit and Indigenous issues and has interests in Nunavut and Canadian policies. In addition to being the Project Development Coordinator at Inuusik/Embrace Life, he is also a youth representative with FRAYME’s Advisory on Youth Matters. FRAE is a global network linking and supporting youth mental health care systems.
October, 2018 – LaMarsh Talk
October, 2018 – LaMarsh Talk: Dr. Naomi Andrews: “A Relational Perspective on Research and Evaluation in Community-Based Settings: Experiences from a Healthy Relationships Intervention Initiative”. Dr. Naomi Andrews is a postdoctoral fellow at Mothercraft’s Breaking the Cycle program and the LaMarsh Centre for Child and Youth Research at York University. She obtained her PhD from the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. Her research has focused on children and adolescent’s involvement in problematic social behaviors, including bullying, aggression, victimization, and delinquency. From the lens that these problem behaviors are inherently social phenomena, she has focused on disentangling the complex social relationship processes that underlie problem behaviors. Currently, she is working on transferring this relational focus to an applied setting through, for one, working on Building Connections: Supporting Community-Based Programs to Address Interpersonal Violence and Child Maltreatment. She is interested in better understanding how healthy and unhealthy relationships impact children’s development, and how relationship focused interventions can be used to support at-risk populations.
November, 2018 – LaMarsh Talk
November, 2018 – LaMarsh Talk: Dr. Dilys Haner, “Chat Counselling with Adolescents through Kids Help Phone/Jeunesse J’ecoute: Important Tips and Tricks for text-based therapeutic Intervention”. Dr. Dilys Haner is a recent graduate of the York University clinical-developmental psychology program. She is in supervised practice at London Family Court Clinic where she consults to several group homes and provides therapy and treatment to children, adolescents, adults, and families involved in the court system. Previously, she worked for 12.5 years at Kids Help Phone/Jeunesse J’écoute, initially as a counsellor, and then as the senior manager of clinical research and development. During this time, Dilys wrote the first evidence-based training manual for “Live Chat” counselling with adolescents. She was briefly known as “Dear Dil” from the LongStory Game and “Counsellor Dilys” on TV Ontario. She has conducted program evaluation for KHP/JJ, Good2Talk, BroTalk, Scouts Canada, and Tapestry New Artist Works. Dilys’ passion is for conducting research in real-word organizations and the intersection between technology and help-seeking in youth.
2017 Events
September, 2017 – LaMarsh Talk
September, 2017 – LaMarsh Talk: Dr. Christine Till, “Addressing the controversies about exposure to fluoride and child behavioral outcome”. Community water fluoridation refers to the controlled practice of adding fluoride to drinking water for the prevention of tooth decay. Most of the research supporting water fluoridation is now decades old and there is ongoing controversy as to its safety and risks. This talk discussed the current controversy related to the efficacy and safety of this public health intervention, with particular focus on early life exposure to fluoride. Dr. Till presented ongoing research that is using data from a national pregnancy cohort study: “Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals” to test whether early life exposure to fluoride adversely impacts cognition and behaviour in Canadian children. This talk also discussed fluoride and health-related research that is being conducted on two other population-based cohorts.
May 2017 – LaMarsh Talk
May 2017 – LaMarsh Talk: Dr. Rebecca Bassett-Gunter: “Physical Activity Among Children with Disabilities: Motivating Supportive Others”. Dr. Rebecca Bassett-Gunter is an Assistant Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science. Her research is focused on understanding and supporting psychosocial predictors of physical activity. She is particularly interested in promoting physical activity among special populations including children and youth with disabilities.
April, 2017 – LaMarsh Talk
April, 2017 – LaMarsh Talk: Dr. Maggie Toplak, “The development of rational thinking: A longitudinal follow-up”. Dr. Maggie Toplak is an Associate Professorof Psychology in the Clinical Developmental area. Her research interests are child and adolescent psychopathology, particularly attention problems. Her training and research interests span cognitive science and clinical research. Dr. Toplak is interested in studying cognitive science models of rational thinking and decision-making in typically developing samples and in developmental psychopathology. Dr. Toplak was awarded the Service Award for Established Career at York University (2015).
March, 2017 – LaMarsh Talk
March, 2017 – LaMarsh Talk: Dr. Rebecca Pillai Riddel, “Powerful speaking for researchers: making your message go further”. Dr. Pillai Riddell is a York Research Chair in Pain and Mental Health in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health. She is the creator and director of a multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder learning event called PICH2GO which was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The goal was to create skill development content valuable to both scientists and their research trainees. Working with collaborators from both TEDxYork and TEDx Calgary, Dr. Pillai Riddell created a mini-workshop adapting established TED strategies for presenting to scientific audiences rather than the traditional lay audience target. Whether you are an experienced scientific speaker or just starting out, she has easy, yet powerful tips to improve speaking to academic audiences.
2016 Events
June, 2016 – LaMarsh Talk
June, 2016, LaMarsh Talk:
Dr. Tania Suely Antonelli Marcelino Brabo, “Bullying, violence and mental health of children in Brazil”. Visiting scholar, Dr. Suely Antonelli Marcelino Brabo graduated in Pedagogy from the Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho. She is currently assistant professor and is interested in the following themes: democratic governance, human rights, gender, citizenship and education. She participated in the Teacher Mobility Programme, conducting research with the Education Program for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights at the National University of Rosario. She also conducted a research internship with the Centre for Studies on Women at the National University of Mexico.
2015 Events
Gala Fundraiser – 2015
Gala Fundraiser – 2015. The LaMarsh Centre for Child and Youth Research held a Gala Fundraiser in 2015 at Theater Passe Muraille. Guests enjoyed a play and our inspirational keynote speaker Michel Chikwanine, a former child soldier who shared his experience, strength and hope.
