Evan F. Risko

The Effects of Anticipating Metacognitive Judgments about Mind-Wandering - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics Across two experiments (N = 121, 121) we examined whether the anticipation of metacognitive judgments in the form of experience sampling probes of mind-wandering influenced attentional engagement. Par...

New research from University of Waterloo Psychology researchers Adrian B. Safati (PhD student) and Dr. Daniel Smilek shows that simply expecting to think about our own thinking can actively influence how we regulate attention. Check it out: link.springer.com/article/10.3...

University of Waterloo Psychology’s boredom expert, James Danckert, shares his origin story (of sorts): “In many ways, I have my brother and an overblown myth of Phineas Gage to thank for my appreciation of boredom.” Read it here: www.boredomsociety.com/jbs/index.ph...

Clinicians’ Opinions, Suggestions, and Concerns Using Social Robots in Psychological Practice - International Journal of Social Robotics In the past decade, technology-assisted interventions for mental health have been growing. To appropriately design technologies to support mental health, such as social robots, a crucial step involves...

What do clinicians think about using social robots in psychological practice? Timely study from an @uwaterloo.ca collaboration between researchers in Engineering and Psychology (Charlotte Aitken & Elizabeth Nilsen). Read here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Differences in Variance, Skewness, and Kurtosis Can Account for Differences in Binary Outcomes - Neil Hester, Eric Hehman, 2025 When researchers consider the relation between continuous predictors (e.g., perceived threat) and binary outcomes (e.g., being stopped by police), they typicall...

New research from University of Waterloo Psychology’s Neil Hester (with Eric Hehman from McGill) shows why looking beyond means matters when using continuous predictors for binary outcomes. Read more here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

The Role of Adolescent Mentalizing and Parental Reflective Functioning for Adolescents' Peer Relationships - PubMed From a theoretical standpoint, findings suggest the important role of parental reflective functioning and youth mentalizing for models of social development. In terms of methodological implications, task and self-report of youth mentalizing were related but differentially predicted peer problems. Pr …

New research from University of Waterloo Psychology researchers (Elizabeth Nilsen, Charlotte Aitken, Kate Van Kessel) offers new insights into how adolescents and their parents' mentalizing and reflective functioning shape peer relationships. Check it out: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41129544/

New research from University of Waterloo Psychology’s David Moscovitch and colleagues offers important insights into the cognitive mechanisms that contribute to the efficacy of imagery rescripting as a therapeutic intervention. Read more here: psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

New research from University of Waterloo psychologists (Megan Barlow, Tiffany Doan, Ori Friedman @orifriedman.bsky.social, and Stephanie Denison) sheds light on why people often probability match rather than maximize when making decisions. see: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Charting the Shift: Age as a Moderator of the Genetic and Environmental Influences on Reading Reading is influenced by genes and environments throughout life. Using a U.S. twin sample (N = 1086; 564 Male: 522 Female; Age M = 7.46 years, SD = 1.57, with 90% self-reported as White, 8% Black, ...

Important new research by University of Waterloo’s @uwaterloopsych.bsky.social
Sara Hart and colleagues demonstrates that genetic or environmental influences on reading skills change with age. see: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

RSC recognizes research excellence at Waterloo | Waterloo News Six University of Waterloo researchers are being recognized as Royal Society of Canada (RSC) fellows and a member of the RSC College. “I am thrilled to congratulate Waterloo's new RSC Fellows and new ...

Huge congratulations to Dr. Dillon Browne from Waterloo’s Department of Psychology on being named to the Royal Society of Canada College! See here for more details: uwaterloo.ca/news/rsc-rec...