Current Lab Members

Priya is a BrainsCAN postdoctoral fellow working with Paul Minda, Laura Batterink, and Marc Joanisse. She is interested in representational changes during learning and more broadly how understanding the mechanisms of learning and memory can inform instructional or training paradigms. As a BrainsCAN postdoc she plans to compare expert and novice representational spaces using a combination of behavioral, imaging, and computational methods. She completed a B.A. in Cognitive Science at U.C. Berkeley, an M.Sc. in Functional Neuroimaging at Brunel University, and an Ed.D. at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has previously studied reading and math cognition using a combination of behavioral and neuroimaging methods.
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Hailey is a MSc student in the Cognitive, Developmental, and Brain Sciences program. She is interested in studying the development of fundamental reading skills such as orthographic and phonological decoding, primarily in children with ADHD. With previous time spent in childcare, she seeks to shed some light on how children with neurodevelopmental disorders learn. Prior to beginning a MSc program at Western, Hailey completed her bachelor's degree at the University of Winnipeg.

Joe is a fourth-year PhD candidate in psychology. He studies how mono- and bilinguals learn, embody, and access words’ affective information, such as valence and arousal. He is also interested in how differences in ease-of-reading (e.g., perceptual fluency v. disfluency) affect processing for monolinguals. In addition to traditional behavioural measures, Joe is interested in meta-analysis and meta-modelling to explore theory and empirical inconsistencies. He received his BA in psychology from Youngstown State University and his MSc in cognitive psychology from Western University

Niki is a PhD student in Neuroscience. They study the role of attentional systems in the development of complex learned skills such as reading. With a background in child and youth studies from Brock University (M.A.) Niki’s research aims to describe the biological pathways through which children develop reading difficulties as well as the brain’s responses to reading intervention using models of attentional resource management. Currently, they are involved in a collaborative project using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify positive predictors of reading intervention response.  

Delaney is currently working as a research assistant and lab manager for Dr. Marc Joanisse.  She earned her Honours Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Brescia University College. She is planning on obtaining her Masters in psychology and pursing a career in research.

Josh is currently a research assistant in the Joanisse Lab. He is a part of
various projects in the lab and has a broad interest in learning more about
the neuroscience of language and the methods involved in its research. He
recently graduated from the University of Waterloo with a HBSc in
Psychology, where he was a part of labs investigating cognition, cognitive
neuroscience, and clinical psychology. Josh hopes to pursue a PhD in
clinical neuropsychology, where he could apply his diverse research
background and interests in cognitive neuroscience to clinical populations.