Christopher Sears

Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Psychology

Chair, University of Calgary Research Ethics Appeal Board

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), 1998-2001, 2002-2006, 2007-2012.

At the most general level, my research explores human cognition and information processing, including attention, memory, and language comprehension. We use a variety of data collection methods in my lab, including speeded choice tasks, masked priming tasks, and eye movement tracking and recording.

Some of our recent studies have examined cognitive distortions and information processing biases associated with dysphoria and depression. We are interested in the effects of depressed mood on the interpretation of ambiguity (e.g., Bisson & Sears, 2007; Sears, Bisson, & Nielsen, 2010) and on memory and attention (e.g., Sears, Thomas, LeHuquet, & Johnson, 2010). One focus of our work in the future will be to explore the attentional biases of individuals vulnerable to depression (e.g., Sears, Newman, Ference, & Thomas, 2011). A major focus of our current research is to determine how experimentally induced moods affect selective attention and memory for emotional information in never depressed individuals (Newman & Sears, 2011).

My other research interests are in psycholinguistics, especially visual word identification and reading. Most of my studies in this area focus on the processing of orthographic, phonological, and semantic information in adult readers of varying skill levels (e.g., Sears, Siakaluk, Chow, & Buchanan, 2008), including bilinguals (e.g., Nakayama, Sears, Hino, & Lupker, 2012). Orthographic neighborhood effects, and their implications for computational models of word identification, have been a continuous interest for many years (e.g., Sears, Hino, & Lupker, 1995; Nakayama, Sears, & Lupker, 2010).

Each year I consider applications from students interested in our graduate programs. If you are interested in pursuing graduate studies under my supervision (M.Sc. and/or Ph.D.), please contact me well in advance of the January application deadline. I am a core faculty member in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) graduate program, but I also supervise students in the Clinical Psychology program who wish to train as researchers and have strong interests in attention and memory research.

Undergraduate students interested in the honours program and honours thesis research (B.A. or B.Sc.) should contact me about research possibilities early in the winter session (March 1 is the deadline for applications to the honours program). You can learn more about my lab, my graduate students, honours students, and our research activities by visiting the Cognitive Sciences Lab.

Undergraduate Research Supervision Award (2008)
Faculty of Social Sciences Teaching Award (2000)
Students' Union Teaching Excellence Award (2000)
Students' Union Teaching Excellence Award (1996)

Philips, C.I., Sears, C.R., & Pexman, P.M. (2012). An embodied semantic processing effect on eye gaze during sentence reading. Language and Cognition, in press.

Nakayama, M., Sears, C.R., Hino, Y., & Lupker, S.J. (2012). Cross-script phonological priming for Japanese-English bilinguals: Evidence for integrated phonological representations. Language and Cognitive Processes, in press.

Sears, C.R., Newman, K.R., Ference, J.D., & Thomas, C.L. (2011). Attention to emotional images in previously depressed individuals: An eye tracking study. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 35, 517-528. [PDF]

Nakayama, M., Sears, C.R., & Lupker, S.J. (2011). Lexical competition in a Non-Roman, syllabic script: An inhibitory neighbor priming effect in Japanese Katakana. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26, 1136-1160. [PDF]

Sears, C.R., Bisson, M.A.S., & Nielsen, K.E. (2011). Dysphoria and the immediate interpretation of ambiguity: Evidence for a negative interpretive bias in error rates but not response latencies. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 5, 469-476. [PDF]

Sears, C.R., Thomas, C.L., LeHuquet, J.M., & Johnson, J.C.S. (2010). Attentional biases in dysphoria: An eye tracking study of the allocation and disengagement of attention. Cognition and Emotion, 24, 1349-1368. [PDF]

Nakayama, M., Sears, C.R., & Lupker, S.J. (2010). Testing for lexical competition during reading: Fast priming with orthographic neighbors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36, 477-492. [PDF]

Sears, C.R., Siakaluk, P.D., Chow. V., & Buchanan, L. (2008). Is there an effect of print exposure on the word frequency effect and the neighborhood size effect? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 37, 269-291. [PDF]

Nakayama, M., Sears, C.R., & Lupker, S.J. (2008). Masked priming with orthographic neighbors: A test of the lexical competition assumption. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 34, 1236-1260. [PDF]

Siakaluk, P.D., Pexman, P.M., Sears, C.R., Wilson, K., Locheed, K., & Owen, W.J. (2008). The benefits of sensorimotor knowledge: Body-object interaction facilitates semantic processing. Cognitive Science, 32, 591-605. [PDF]

Siakaluk, P.D., Pexman, P.M., Aguilera, L., Owen, W.J., & Sears, C.R. (2008). Evidence for the activation of sensorimotor information during visual word recognition: The body-object interaction effect. Cognition, 106, 433-443. [PDF]

Kerswell, L., Siakaluk, P.D., Pexman, P.M., Sears, C.R., & Owen, W.J. (2007). Homophone effects in visual word recognition depend on homophone type and task demands. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61, 322-327. [PDF]

Bisson, M.A.S., & Sears, C.R. (2007). The effect of depressed mood on the interpretation of ambiguity, with and without negative mood induction. Cognition and Emotion, 21, 614-645. [PDF]

Siakaluk, P.D., Pexman, P.M., Sears, C.R., & Owen, W.J. (2007). Multiple meanings are not necessarily a disadvantage in semantic processing: Evidence from homophone effects in semantic categorization. Language and Cognitive Processes, 22, 453-467. [PDF]

Kristin Newman (Ph.D. student, Clinical psychology program)

Charmaine Thomas (Ph.D. student, Clinical psychology program)

Caitlin Wright (M.Sc. student, Clinical psychology program)

• Courses
• Supervised Students