Dr. Gagnon is a full-time professor at the University of Ottawa and heads the laboratory. His research interests include the changes in memory and learning associated with older age. Together with his graduate students, he investigates the ability to drive in many populations of drivers, including older drivers, drivers with cognitive limitations, and young male and female drivers. More specifically, his research aims at determining the best ‘cognitive’ predictors of safe driving and how driving safety can be maintained through customized retraining programs.

Sylvain Gagnon
Professor and Director

Room: VNR 3042
Office: 613-562-5800 ext. 2515
Work E-mail: sgagnon@uOttawa.ca

• Michael Armstrong

Michael is a doctoral student in the clinical psychology program. He completed his master's degree in experimental psychology at Carleton University in 2012 and has a diverse background in youth mental health, behavioral medicine and health psychology. His current research focuses on the development of a protocol for the clinical assessment of older drivers. This project explores the use of driving simulators as a potential tool in the process of assessing driving skills. Through this project, we aim to better understand how to improve the process of assessing the driving ability of patients referred to a memory clinic, and how to better convey the results of these assessments to patients and their caregivers.

Work E-mail: marms010@uOttawa.ca

• Christine Saber

Christine is currently in her 7th year in the Clinical Psychology doctoral program. She specializes with children, adolescents and families and is completing her internship at the Ottawa Carleton District Board. Her research examines the impact of a driving simulator training program on scanning behaviors at intersections for older adults. 

Work E-mail: csabe057@uOttawa.ca

• Fatou Sarr

Fatou is a doctoral student in experimental psychology. Her research focuses on the effects of unconscious influences on working memory (the ability to actively hold sequences of items in memory) in young adults. Fatou has carried out a series of 7 studies on this theme and is currently writing her doctoral thesis.

Work E-mail: fsarr2@uOttawa.ca

• Vincent Francoeur

Vincent completed his Honours B.A. in Psychology in June 2023 and joined the Lab shortly after as a master’s/PhD student. He also holds a B.A. and a master’s in economics from Université Laval.   Vincent’s interests in experimental psychology include the interdisciplinary study of cognitive and emotion processing. Under the supervision of Dr Sylvain Gagnon, he is currently leading the Emotion Discrimination Data Collection and Analysis Project in collaboration with a team from the School of Electric Engineering and Computer Sciences.

Current Research Assistants:

• Alina Khan
• Radya Omar
• Annie Théberge Charbonneau
• Tegan Marla Stassen
• Christine Van Houtte

Past Research Assistants:

• Devon Keough

Past Directed Research Students:

• Emily Payne

The use of driving simulation in a clinical assessment context

Investigators: Sylvain Gagnon (University of Ottawa), Frank Knoefel (Brain and Mind Research Institute, Bruyère Memory Program, Bruyère Continuing Care, Bruyère Research Institute), Arne Stinchcombe (Saint Paul University & University of Ottawa), Rafik A. Goubran, Vice President (Research and International), Chancellor’s Professor (Carleton University), Stephanie Yamin, (Saint-Paul University), Michael Armstrong (University of Ottawa).

Summary: In this research program, we examine new ways to combine simulator driving outcomes to clinical information that physicians and specialized health professional use to determine driving safety of patients experiencing cognitive decline. The ultimate goal consists in simplifying driving simulator assessment and the translation of its outcomes in a way that will facilitate and increase the validity of the clinical decision process. The project is ongoing.

Gender and Driving

Investigators: Sylvain Gagnon (University of Ottawa) & Yara Kadulina (University of Ottawa)

Summary: Many factors have an influence on driving safety. For instance, it is known that young males have higher risk of crash than females of the same age. However, some strong biases in our society associate better driving with male drivers while objective safety indicators tell the opposite. What is the influence of sex and gender on driver’s self-perception and perception of other drivers’ ability? How strong are the sex and gender base biases in regards to driving in our society? Using various methods, we conduct studies that explore the influence of sex on driving across the lifespan. This project is ongoing.

Factors leading to texting and driving

Investigator: Sylvain Gagnon (University of Ottawa)

Summary: The use of smartphones while driving is one of the leading causes of crash. Many drivers report having texted while driving. Why do drivers do respond to their device or even initiate the writing of a text? This is the kind of questions we are exploring in the lab. It is known that driving and texting impairs driving. Yet, it is essential to understand why some drivers keep texting regardless of the elevated risk associated with this behavior. In this project, we explore the factors influencing this risk taking attitude towards texting and driving. The project is ongoing.

Exploring the ‘unconscious’ learning influences in working memory paradigms.

Investigators: Sylvain Gagnon (University of Ottawa) & Fatou Sarr (University of Ottawa)

Summary: In this research project, we examine how unconscious contributions to working memory performance (holding a phone number of one’s mind for a short period of time or writing course notes while listening to a lecture) can be explored and discriminated from conscious processing. Previous studies show that previously learned material or associations can either boost or alter working memory performance. We are exploring this issue using a novel paradigm that enables the study of unconscious influences without interfering with conscious memory processing. The project is ongoing.

In our first study, participants watch a series of emotionally inducing film clips while we measure their physiological signals using electrodes and advanced sensors, including an electronic patch and a smartwatch. We also record their verbal expressions of emotions and collect self-reports of emotional instances through short questionnaires. The large resulting multi-modal database will help our team generate new artificial intelligence (machine-learning) models for detecting and discriminating human emotions in a controlled laboratory setting.  We are also analyzing relations between stimuli, perceived emotions, emotional behaviors, and physiological signals.

Meneghini, V. Mahumane, C., Rodrigues Barbosa, A., Stinchcombe, A. & Gagnon, S. (Submitted). Physical fitness is associated with simulator driving performance in young drivers. 

Kadulina, Y., Adema, J.D., Franklin, D., Stinchcombe, A., & Gagnon, S. (Submitted). Who is driving? Confirmation of gendered stereotypes using video sequences of safe and unsafe simulated driving reactions.  

Marshall, S., Bédard, M., Vrkljan, B., Tuokko, H., Porter, M.M., Rapoport, M.J., Mazer, B., Gélinas, I., Gagnon, S., Charlton, J.., Koppel, S., MacLeay, L., Mallick, R., Ramsay, T., Stiell, I., Wells, G., Man-Son-Hing, M. (2023) The Candrive Older Driver Risk Stratification Tool. Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. Accessible online.

Gibbings, A., Ray, L.B. Gagnon, S., Collins, C.A., Robillard, R., Foegel, S.M. (2022). The EEG correlates and dangerous behavioral consequences of drowsy driving after a single night of mild sleep deprivation. Physiology & Behavior, 252, 1-6.

Wallace, B., Gagnon, S., Stinchcombe, A., Yamin, S., Goubran, R., & Knoefel, F. (2021). Preliminary Results for the Automated Assessment of Driving Simulation Results for Drivers with Cognitive Decline. 2021 IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium (SAS), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/SAS51076.2021.9530113. 

Armstrong, M., Mercier, O., Stinchcombe, A., Yamin, S., Knoefel, F., & Gagnon, S. (In press). Using Video Replay of Simulated Driving to Estimate Driving Safety and Cognitive Status. Safety. 

Yamin, S., Ranger, V., Stinchcombe, A., Knoefel, F., Gagnon, S., Bédard, M. (2020). Using serial trichotomization with neuropsychological measures to inform clinical decisions on fitness-to-drive among older adults, Occupational Therapy in Health Care, Nov28, 1-21. 

Stinchcombe, A., Marchese, C., Fossum, S., Gagnon, S., Naglie, G., Rapoport, M.J., Weaver, B., Bédard, M. (2021). The effect of social support on the association between driving status and depression symptoms in aging drivers differs by gender: findings from the CLSA. Journal of Transportation & Health, 20, 1-9.

Maxwell, H., Weaver, B, Gagnon, S., Marshall, S., & Bédard, M. (2020). The validity of three new driving simulator scenarios: Detecting differences in driving performance by difficulty and driver gender and age. Human Factors, July, 1-16. 
Gagnon, S., Stinchcombe, A., Curtis, M., Kateb, M., Polgar, M., Porter, M., & Bédard, M. (2019). Driving safety improves after individualized training: An RCT involving older drivers in an urban area. Traffic Injury & Prevention, 20, 595-600.

Saber, C., Armstrong, M., Stinchcombe, A., Yamin, S., & Gagnon, S. (2019). Reactions at intersections of drivers with Alzheimer’s disease: The association between neuropsychological assessment and driving errors in a driving simulator. Advances in Transportation Studies: an International Journal, 48, 77-86.

Hua, P., MacLeay, L., Man-Son-Hing, M., Mazer, B., Myers, A., Naglie, G., Odell, M., Porter, M.M., Rapoport M.J., Stinchcombe, A., Tuokko, H., Vrkjlan, B., & Marshall, S. (2019) Self-reported violations, errors and lapses for older drivers: Measuring the change in frequency of aberrant driving behaviours across five time-points. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 123, 132-139. Contribution: 5%. Active role in the redaction of the submitted version of the manuscript.

Hua, P., Charlton, J.L., Ponsford, J.L., Gooden, J.R., Ross, P.E., Bédard, M., Marshall, S., Gagnon, S. & Stolwyk, R.J. (2018). Using Naturalistic Methods to Examine Real-World Driving Behavior in Individuals with TBI Upon Return to Driving: A Pilot Study. Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation.

Stolwyk, R.J., Charlton, J.L., Ross, P.E., Bédard, M., Marshall, S., Gagnon, S., Gooden, J.R. & Ponsford, J.L. (2018). Characterizing on-road driving performance in individuals with traumatic brain injury who pass or fail an on-road driving assessment. Disability and Rehabilitation. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2018.1424955