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The new school year is starting and the MAPLE Lab is excited for another year of research and learning! This year we are welcoming new undergraduate research assistants Melody Aslan, Nicholas Gierczak, Benjamin Kelly, Denise Lee, Logan Marquis, Graeme Noble, Divya Prasad, and Lydia-Marie Zomparelli. We are also happy to see some familiar faces returning: Cameron Anderson, Nic Ballarin, Rebecca Benjamin, Isabella Lamantia, Neerjah Skantharajah, and Alex Wong. You can find out more about them on our people page. Keep up with all of our new projects and events on our news and events page! |
Category: aboutus
Starting a New Semester in the MAPLE Lab
The MAPLE Lab is psyched to get back into the swing of things this semester. We are also happy to welcome our new team of student research assistants to the lab. The hard work of all of our research assistants is essential to the success of the lab. You can find out more about them on our people page.
This year promises to be exciting and productive with many new projects, publications, and events already underway. Stay tuned to our news and events page to keep up with all of our updates.
Fiona Manning becomes first PhD Graduate of the MAPLE Lab
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Congratulations to Fiona Manning, who officially became our first PhD at the Fall Convocation Ceremony on Friday at Hamilton Place. Her dissertation explored the intersection between movement and timing. Her first paper (published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review) showed that participants performed better in timing perception when they moved to the beat versus when they did not move to the beat. In her subsequent paper (published in Timing & Time Perception), participants who moved to the beat performed better when provided with auditory feedback. Her third paper (published last summer in Psychological Research) showed that percussionists had superior timing perception than non-percussionists when moving along to the beat but, interestingly, there was no difference in performance between the groups when asked to simply listen to the beat. She currently has manuscripts from this dissertation under review, as well as other potential publications from this fruitful line of research. Fiona is currently working as a postdoc at Concordia University with Virginia Penhune, further exploring the role of movement in auditory perception. Congrats Dr. Manning – we look forward to your future success! |
Welcome to our new lab members: Noah Little, Erica Huynh, and Arielle Spilak!
 Noah Little is beginning his Ph.D. program, with interests in exploring the benefits of attending musical events, and music with movement synchronicity. He recently completed his Master’s in Music, Mind, and Technology at Jyväskylä University, in Finland. |
 Erica Huynh is a 4th year Honours B.Sc. Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour student specializing in Music Cognition. She is working on the performance gestures project for her thesis. |
 Arielle Spilak is in the Music Cognition Specialization, earning a B.Sc. through a Combined Honours in Arts & Science and Psychology. She is working on the Emotion Piano project for her thesis. |
We are also excited to welcome a new class of undergraduate research assistants. For more information on all lab personnel visit our people page.
New Members of the MAPLE Lab! Anna Siminoski, Kimberly Germann, and Annilee Baron
 Anna is beginning her M.Sc. degree in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, & Behaviour. She is coming to us from the University of British Columbia where she completed a Bachelors degree with a double major in psychology and music performance. |
 Kimberly is a fourth year student in the Honours B.Sc. Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour program. She is completing her thesis on amplitude envelope discrimination, and also serves as the lab’s “Wiki Master”. |
 Annilee is an Honours B.Sc. Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour student exploring the communication of emotion in music. She is also our “Public Relations Specialist” assisting with outreach and publicity. |
Dr. Schutz is awarded tenure and promotion to Associate Professor; granted research leave for 2015-16
After six years of serving as Assistant Professor and establishing the MAPLE Lab, Dr. Schutz has received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. Under his supervision, the lab has grown significantly since it’s establishment in 2009 and houses four graduate students as well as several thesis and a dozen undergraduate student researchers annually. During his research leave he will be a Visiting Professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, where he will be working on collaborations with Dr. Frank Russo.
He looks forward to continuing to mentor the next generation of music perception and cognition scholars as they make new discoveries helping to shed light on core issues of importance to musicians, psychologists, and neuroscientists alike. He would like to thank the many students, colleagues, and staff members who have been instrumental in growing the MAPLE lab over the past several years!
Dominique and Aimee received funding to support their research projects
Hamilton, Ontario
Dominique Beauregard Cazabon was awarded a $15,000 Master’s scholarship by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies. Aimee Battcock successfully secured support from the NunatuKavut Skills and Development Bursary ($6000) to support her research on the perception of emotion in music. Fiona Manning will be entering her second year of funding through SSHRC Bombardier CGS (Canadian Graduate Scholarship) program.
MAPLE Lab alumni move forward with their next career steps!
Congratulations to Peter Bamikole, Emily Gula, Diana Martinez and Jen Harris for acceptance into their future programs!
- Peter Bamikole will be heading to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee to complete his Medical Degree.
- Emily Gula will be attending the University of Ottawa this fall to complete a Master’s in Audiology.
- Diana Martinez will be studying law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California.
- Jen Harris will be enrolling in the Master of Clinical Science (MClSc) program program at Western, where she will be joining fellow lab alumni Jonny Vaisberg (’13) and Janet Kim (’11).
Jess Gillard becomes our first MSc graduate, accepts job offer as a researcher at St. Joesph’s Healthcare
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Jess’s thesis included an extensive coding of many properties of sounds used in the journals Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, as well as the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. As part of this project she developed a significant amount of R code for use in visualizing the distribution of various properties. Her thesis also included original perceptual experiments involving manipulations of amplitude envelope. She is now applying her facility in data analytics to a new position as a research assistant at St. Joseph’s Healthcare, working on a survey of operational efficiency. Congratulations Jess – we are excited for your future and look forward to building on the great work you’ve done the past few years. |