The PNLab goes back to High-School!

Over the past few months, three Laval Liberty High-School students, Thun-Carl Sieu, Istvan Dupcsak, and Cristiana Costopolous, developed a science project under the mentorship of PNLab graduate student, Domenico Tullo. These projects examined attention in adolescents using a three-dimensional multiple object tracking (3D-MOT) paradigm.

We are pleased to announce that all three students performed exceptionally well at their school science fair. We would like to congratulate Thun & Istvan for finishing in first place! Thun will be presenting his project at the Hydro Québec Science Fair hosted by Concordia University on March 29-31, 2015.

In their project, Thun and Istvan examined how divided attention changes with increasing task demands in a group of adolescents. Specifically, participants completed four conditions in which they followed one, two, three, and four out of a total of 8 spheres that moved randomly in a 3D space. They additionally manipulated the speed at which the spheres moved and measured how quickly the participants could accurately track them. Interestingly, they found that participants responded slower as the number of spheres increased. In other words, the divided attention of adolescents decreased as task demands increased. Participants completed the 3D-MOT task using a wearable 3D display.

Cristiana examined the effects of feedback on performance in the same 3D-MOT task. She found that participants who did not receive feedback performed better than those that did. This suggests that participants who received feedback redirected their attention to the additional information, and thereby performed worse on the actual tracking component. The PNLab is expanding upon this finding by exploring the relationship between feedback and learning in on-going studies.

The PNLab would like to congratulate Thun-Carl, Istvan, and Cristiana for a job well-done and wish them continued success !