What’s New?

This page presents some of the progress we are making in the Culture and Cognition Laboratory.

May 2024

Congratulations to Yuto Yasuda for his recent publication: Cultural Variation in Self-assessment in Athletes: Towards the Development of Culturally-Grounded Approach in Sports Psychology.

Congratulations to Dawn Abraham, for getting accepted into the MEd Counselling Psychology program at the University of Alberta!

Congratulations to Yuto Yasuda, who was offered a position at Osaka University of Health and Sport Sciences!

Congratulations to Mackenzie Mol, for getting accepted into Law School at the University of Alberta!

April 2024

Congratulations to Tsolmon Bayard-Od for successfully presenting his poster “Beyond east and west: A cultural task analysis across Mongolians, Japanese, and Canadians” that he worked on in collaboration with the Mongolian group at the Royce Conference.

March 2024

Congratulations to Liman Li, for receiving a tenure position at the University of Hong Kong!

July 2023

We went to Jasper for a couple days for a statistics bootcamp, where we learned more about using SPSS and R software. During out time there, we also enjoyed an excursion to Pyramid lake, walking around Jasper, a yoga class, and campfires!

June 2023

Congratulations to Nishat Nawsheen for getting accepted into the Masters in Counselling program at the University of New Brunswick!

May 2023

Our fellow lab member, Shaneen, visited Guatemala and hiked Volcano Acatenango, which recently had a huge eruption. Below are some photos she shared from her trip.

April 2023

We celebrated the end of the semester with a potluck! Students brought foods that were reflective of their cultural backgrounds, and some also wore cultural clothes.

This Saturday, April 8th, Tsomo, Dawn, and Arianna joined Dr. Masuda in attending an art exhibition in Sherwood Park! We had the opportunity to try embroidering our own designs—pictured below are students working on their embroidery, as well as Dawn, Dr. Masuda, and Arianna’s final products!

March 2023

Congratulations to Gauri Bharadwaj for getting accepted into the School Psychology program at the University of Oregon!

February 2023

Congratulations to Dr. Masuda, Yuto Yasuda, and Tsolmon Bayart-Od for their recent publication!

2022 July

Congratulations to Dr. Masuda, Shuwei Shu, Pragya Varma, Delaney Fisher and Safi Shirzai for their recent publication.

2022 June

Congratulations to the following team for their recent publication!

2022 May 

The lab team got together for our first in-person meet up since the pandemic started. Head to the gallery for some pictures from our fun meeting!

Congratulations to Jing Han, for getting accepted into University of Calgary’s Medical program!

Congratulations to former PhD student Dr. Liman Man Wai Li for receiving the IACCP Early Career Award this year!

2022 

Congratulations to Dr. Masuda for receiving the APS fellow award!

2022 April 

Congratulations to Leah Wojcik for successfully presenting her poster “Coping with threats to Body Image: A cross-cultural study on stress coping strategies between East Asians and European Canadians” that she worked on in collaboration with the Stress group  at the Royce- Harder Conference.

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2022 February

Congratulations to our Lab Manager, Pragya Varma for getting admitted into Teachers College, Columbia University for EdM. in Psychological Counseling: Mental Health Counseling, and University of Lethbridge, MEd. in Counselling Psychology.

Congratulations to our fellow lab member Jing Yi Han for publishing her first paper!

2019 April

Congratulations to Bryce Hoy for her acceptance into the Master of Education School and Clinical Child Psychology program at the University of Alberta and to Jamie Nisbet for her acceptance into the Master of Science in Communication Sciences and Disorders, Speech-Language Pathology program  at the University of Alberta

2019 January

Congratulations to Nigel Mantou Lou for successfully defending his dissertation!

2018 December

Congratulations to Hajin Lee for successfully defending her dissertation!

2018 September

We are very happy to have Dr. Steven Heine visit and give our psychology department a talk about essentialism and potential cultural variations in ideology.

2018 July

Hokkaido University Summer Institute completed successfully. Good job Bryce Hoy and Zack Muncaster!

2018 June

Hajin Lee has passed her dessertation defense. Congratulations Hajin!

Emily Wu has been accepted as an English teacher in the Jet Program. She will be spending the next 2-3 years in Japan. Congratulations Emily!

Liman Li’s paper has been accepted by the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. The title is: “Culture and decision making: Influence of analytic versus holistic thinking style on resource allocation in a fort game.”

2018 January

Dr. Masuda received Honour Roll with Distinction for two of his courses in Fall 2017. Congratulations, Dr. Masuda!

Congratulations to Emily for being invited to interview for the Jet Program!

2017 October

Congratulations to Denise for the successful completion of her Psychology Internship poster presentation!

2017 September

The Culture and Cognition Lab weekly meetings will start on September 8th!

Mantou Nigel Lou’s dissertation proposal is approved. Congratulations, Nigel!

2017 June-August

Congratulation to Dr. Liman Li for acquiring the positon of assistant professor at the Department of Psychology, the Education University of Hong Kong!

Dr. Masuda, Dr. Senzaki, Hajin and Tom has a successful session at Hokkaido Summer Institute.

Dr. Masuda, Hajin, Shirley and Sumin collected data at Kyushu University and Kobe University.

Dr. Masuda taught at Hitotsubashi University, Business School, International Corporate Strategy Program (ICS).

Matthew Russell, Ph D. acquired the position of Research Associate.

2017 May

Congratulations to Dr. Masuda and the rest of the Culture & Cognition Lab team on receiving the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Standard Research Grant (169,236 CAD)!!

Sukhvir acquired the positon of Lab Manager.

2017 April

Congratulations to our lab coordinator Amy in getting a position in Edmonton Public School!

2017 March

Congratulations to Dr. Masuda for his publication!

Masuda, T. (2017). Bunka to kokoro: Bunka shinri gaku no genzai no doukou [Culture and the mind: The current advances in cultural psychology]. Shinrigaku World, 76.

2017 January

Congratulations to our Graduate student Hajin Lee for her publication!

Lee, H., Shimizu, Y., Masuda, T., & Ulman, J. (in press). Cultural Differences in Spontaneous Trait and Situation Inferences” in its current form for publication. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Taka posted his poster for his JCCP presentation outside our lab!

New semester started, there are 15 students in our lab currently!

2016 December

Taka travelled to Japan to collect new ERP and eye tracking data at Kobe University.

2016 November

C&C lab members focused on data collection.

2016 October

Amy joined the lab as a lab manager.

2016 September

New semster started! New members joined our lab.

Taka attended the annual conference of Japan Society of Social Psychology.

2016 August

Taka enjoyed camping and seeing Northern Light with his family!

2016 July

Taka travelled to Japan and taught a course in Hokaido University Summer Institution!

Taka attended the ISSBD 2016 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Taka attended the ISCCPconference in Nagoya, Japan.

Taka also attended the ICP conference in Yokohama, Japan.

2016 June

Taka’s child development research group initiated data collection in Calgary and Edmonton.

2016 April

Taka attended the Clarement Neuroscience Symposium in Los Angeles.

The final draft of Taka’s book chapter for The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Psychology was accepted, and his paper on patterns of attention was accepted to JCCP!

Masuda, T., Ishii, K., & Kimura, J. (in press). When does the culturally dominant mode of attention appear or disappear? Comparing patterns of eye movement during the visual flicker task between European Canadians and Japanese. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology.

Taka also recieved a bridging grant from the U of A.

In other news, the Winter semester has ended, wrapping up another very productive year for us! We are very much looking forward to the summer.

2016 March

Taka travelled to Japan to attend Dr. Koyasu’s retirement lecture and symposium.

2016 January

The Winter semester has begun and two of our papers got accepted!

Senzaki, S., Masuda, T., Takada, A., & Okada, H. (in press). The communication of culturally dominant modes of attention from parents to children: A comparison of Canadian and Japanese parent-child conversations during a joint scene description task. PLoSOne.

Li, L. M. W., Masuda, T., & Jiang, F. (in press). Influence of cultural meaning system and socioeconomic change on indecisiveness in three cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Taka was awarded the ISSS award for Excellence in Teaching at their annual Instructor Appreciation Night!

2015 December

Taka and Matt are both going to Japan for data collection.

2015 November

We had our last lab meeting for the semester and are ready for a break.

2015 October

Dr. Yohsuke Otsubo from Kobe University has come to give an evolutionary psychology talk entitled Punishers Manage Their Impression by Themselves: Intention Signaling Strategy in Indirect Reciprocity.

2015 September

The Fall semester has started, and we have seven new students!

Dr. Yuri Miyamoto from the University of Wisconsin has come to visit us and give a talk entitled Culture and Hierarchy: Social and Cognitive Correlates of Hierarchy in East and West.

2015 July

Taka, Matt, Hajin, Liman, and Kacy are visiting Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.

Dr. Liman Li has been hired at Sun Yat-sen University in China.

2015 January

Taka’s entry for the Encyclopedia of the Theory of Psychology was accepted.

One of our students has won an award! Congratulations Shez on receiving the Peter Lougheed Scholarship.

The Winter semester has begun!

2014 October

Sawa’s paper (2014) and Taka’s paper (2008) are mentioned in Psychology Today (Oct 17th). http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culture-conscious/201410/how-high-is-your-horizon.

2014 September

The Fall semester starts this month, and we’d like to welcome all of our new lab members!

Sawa’s paper has been published and is now available as a hard copy in Cognitive Science. (Senzaki, S., Masuda, T., & Ishii, K. (2014). Cultural variation in attention: The critical role of task engagement on patterns of eye movements. Cognitive Science, 38, 1493-1506).

Dr. Takahiko Masuda and his collaborators Dr. Keiko Ishii and Dr. Yosuke Ohtsubo have received a research grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education for understanding the genetic bases of cultural variation within the disciplines of social psychology, neuroscience, and endocrinology.

Hajin’s paper was accepted (Lee, H., Shimizu, Y., & Uleman, J.S. (in press). Cultural Differences in the Automaticity of Elemental Impression Formation. Social Cognition).

2014 August

Liman’s paper was accepted (Li, L. M. W., Masuda, T., Russell, M. J. (in press). Culture and decision making: Investigating cultural variations in the East Asian and North American online decision making processes. Asian Journal of Social Psychology).

Kris’s paper based on her Master’s thesis was accepted (Nand, K., Masuda, T., Senzaki, S., & Ishii, K. (in press). Examining cultural drifts in artworks through development and history: Cultural comparisons between Japanese and Western landscape paintings and drawings. Frontiers in Cultural Psychology).

2014 July

Taka organized a symposium at the annual meeting of the Japanese Soceity of Social Psychology (July 26-27, Sapporo, Japan)

Taka organized a symposium at the conference of the International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology (July 16-19, Reims, France)

Sawa, Liman, Mantou, Dr Kim Noels’ lab members, and Dr. Heine and Dr. Takayanagi had a wonderful dinner in Reims.

Taka visited Kobe University and Kyoto University.

Taka’s book chapter on language and meaning systems was published (Masuda, T. (in press). Bunka ga umidasu imitaikei to sono shutoku [Meaning systems generated by culture and its learning process]. In M. Imai & N. Saji (Eds.), Iwanami koza: Communication no ninchi kagaku, Dai 1 kan [Iwanami Lecture Series: Cognitive sciences in communication, Vol. 1]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.)

2014 June

Taka’s book chapeter was accepted (Masuda, T., Li, L. M. W., & Russell, M. J. (in press). Judging the world dialectically vs. non-dialectically: Cultural variations in on line decision-making processes. In J. Spencer-Rodgers & K. Peng (Eds.), The psychological and cultural foundations of East Asian Cognitions. New York: Oxford University Press. )

2014 May

Liman’s paper was published (Li, L. M. W., Masuda, T., Russell, M. J. (2014). The influence of cultural lay beliefs: Dialecticism and indecisiveness in European Canadians and Hong Kong Chinese. Personality and Individual Differences, 68, 6-12).

Ken’s paper was published (Ito, K., Masuda, T., Komiya, A., & Hioki, K. (2014). Seeking help from close, same-sex friends: Relational costs for Japanese and personal costs European Canadians. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. doi: 10.1177/0265407514539780).

2014 April

Taka visited Japan for data collection.

The winter semester ended.

2014 March

Taka gave two invited talks at Kyoto University

Sawa’s paper got accepted (Senzaki, S., Masuda, T. & Nand, K. (2014). Holistic versus analytic expressions in artworks: Cross-cultural differences and similarities in drawings and collages by Canadian and Japanese school-age children. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, doi: 10.1177/0022022114537704/)

Taka’s book chapter in Japanese was published (Masuda, T. (2014). Bunka to ninchi kenkyu no shintenkai [New directions in research on culture and cognition]. In O. Takagi., I, Daibo., & K. Takemura. (Eds.,), Shakai shinrigaku no shintenkai [New directions in social psychology], pp. 186-204. Kyoto: Kitaoji Shobo)

2014 February

Taka co-organized SPSP Culture and Psychology Preconfernece.

Matt, Liman, and Kristina presented their data at SPSP conference.

2014 January

Sawa’s paper got accepted (Senzaki, S., Masuda, T. & Ishii, K. (2014). When is perception top-down, and when is it not? Culture, narrative, and attention. Cognitive Science. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12118)

The winter semester started.

Culture & Cognition Lab Web Committee, October 2015