Alberta Brain & Cognitive Development Lab

Welcome to the ABCD Lab! Our research examines how children develop the ability to regulate their behaviour, attention, cognition, and emotions. Typical research questions that the ABCD lab asks include:

1.“How do these abilities emerge and develop in the infant,toddler, and preschool years?’

2.“How do changes in behaviour relate to brain development?“

3.“What factors put children at risk for developing problems with self–regulation?”

To study these questions, we use methods drawn from Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, including game–like tasks adapted from adult neuropsychological tests and behavioral neuroscience measures, sometimes in conjunction with neuroimaging methods like event–related potentials (ERPs), in which we record small ongoing changes in voltage at the scalp that reflects underlying brain activity. In addition, we are interested in how contextual and genetic factors (nature and nurture) interact to influence children’s developing self-regulatory capacity.