Welcome to Our Lab

Our lab aims to understand how children, adolescents, and emerging adults socially relate to one another, decide they like (or dislike) one another, and form lasting friendships, as well as what the longer term effects of peer relationships may be on adjustment. We are also interested in why some youth have trouble getting along with peers and how to develop better interventions to help these youth.

Some of our lab’s research focuses on youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) because this disorder is quite common, and many youth with ADHD experience difficulties getting along with peers, socially interacting, and making and keeping good friends. Some of the reasons for this may be due to societal stigma which affects peers’ perceptions and assumptions about those with ADHD, while other reasons may be due to the core features of the disorder. Some research in this lab also concerns how neurotypical youth interact with peers, and this is because peer relationships are important for everyone! Our research mainly involves children (ages 6-11), but some studies investigate how adolescents and emerging adults form social bonds and get information about ADHD, particularly in the digital world such as on social media like Instagram or Tik Tok. (With COVID-19, the digital world seems to get more and more relevant, doesn’t it?). We are also starting some studies examining how Asian Canadian families and youth perceive ADHD and make treatment decisions, and their experiences in treatment for ADHD, in order to understand and hopefully address the services gap for this group.

Interested in participating in our research studies? Learn more under For Families. Think you might want to join the lab for graduate school or as an undergraduate research assistant? Go to Prospective Students. Thanks for visiting and we hope to hear from you!

We are grateful to do this work on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, and we reflect upon how we benefit from the appropriation of these lands. Learn more about land acknowledgements.