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Travel Grants: Alex Ryken’s Reflection

This summer I had the opportunity to present a talk at the annual convention of the Canadian Psychological Association. The Canadian Psychological Association, or CPA, is a network of Canadians whose work involves psychology or who are interested in the discipline. To connect and share knowledge, members of the CPA meet annually in various cities in Canada. This year the convention was held at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto. I was wowed by the venue, and a video welcome from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the opening ceremony made the conference feel even more official and important.

There were over 1000 attendees expected over the three days of the convention, and more students than I expected. I had been worried about feeling alone at the conference, but that did not last long. Because of the conference’s proximity to London this year, there were a number of students from Western’s main campus attending and I was pleasantly surprised to know several students who I could attend events and talks with. There was also a breakfast for first-time attendees to network and meet other newcomers, with a presentation on how to get the most out of the conference.

The conference was very clinically oriented while I am much more interested in the cognitive side of psychology. Still, there was a lot of diversity in the research presented. I attended talks on the post traumatic effects of policing, the individual and ideological factors in extremist and terrorist minds, the pathology of cyber-crime and piracy, how singles change their Facebook profiles to attract mates, how scrabble players process words, and many more. I learned a lot about many new areas, some of which I hadn’t even heard of before. For example, did you know that preschool firestarters are a problem? I didn’t, but someone did an entire research project on treatment for young children who deliberately start fires! Another favourite but unexpected talk came from the psychologist, producer, and host of the reality TV show Big Brother Canada. They discussed how they use psychology when creating their show, and pointed out that they are essentially running a large-scale social experiment each summer which could teach other psychologists a great deal about human interactions.

Another student made a comment to me during the conference that anyone who had a stereotype in their head of what a psychologist looks like would find such a stereotype difficult to maintain after seeing the variety of attendees at CPA. The psychologists there were old and young, from students like me to professionals at the ends of distinguished careers. There were people of all genders and backgrounds and cultures, all brought together by a love of psychology. I was very glad to be a part of it.

My presentation, “Infants’ processing of melody and lyrics when presented simultaneously in song” was scheduled for day two of the conference. It was a GIMME-5 presentation, which is a new format for the CPA and involves a 3 slide maximum and a 5-minute time limit. My presentation was largely based on my honors thesis project (which was over 30 pages), and so it was very challenging to condense all of my findings into a few minutes. I was encouraged to focus on a few key points and a takeaway message, and found that this practice really helped me put my work into perspective. Understanding what parts of a research project are most interesting and important to the public will help me in the future as I give other presentations and share my research with others. I was nervous to give my presentation, but it went well and I received very positive feedback. It also felt really good to share my work with a group of people who understood the project and were very interested in the findings.

The Huron community also had a strong presence at CPA. Three Huron professors attended the conference, and two were able to give support by attending my presentation. Several former Huron students attended the conference as well, and it was fun to meet them and watch them interact with the professors, some of whom they’d kept in touch with for years (and in one case, decades!) after their time at Huron. Huron is a small school, but it has an impressive network and it’s nice to be reminded that Huron connections can be found almost anywhere we go.

Through attending this conference, I learned a lot about subfields of psychology I hadn’t been exposed to before. I also gained a new appreciation for the work psychologists do and the value of coming together to share our findings. It is important, but it can also be very fun and I look forward to attending many more conferences in the future!

Thank you to everyone at CURL for making this possible.