Ryan Yeung

Ryan Yeung

Postdoctoral Fellow @ Rotman Research Institute (Levine Lab)

Talks

Voluntary and involuntary autobiographical memories: More similar than different?

June 19, 2022

Talk, CSBBCS, Halifax, NS

In everyday life, memories of one's personal past (autobiographical memories; AMs) are typically retrieved either voluntarily or involuntarily. Here, we examined similarities and differences between voluntary and involuntary AMs (N = 4,801). Results indicated that recurrent IAMs were largely distinguished by higher emotionality/importance and lower vividness than voluntary AMs, though both types of memory overlapped considerably with regard to memory properties. Importantly, the emotionality of recurrent IAMs predicted symptoms of mental health disorders significantly better than voluntary AMs. Our work supports modeling recurrent IAMs as general cognitive phenomena with unique links to mental health.

Key takeaways from Waterloo’s undergraduate mental health literacy course

November 10, 2021

Talk (co-author), University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON

Since Winter 2020, the Faculty of Health has offered an undergraduate Mental Health Literacy course (AHS 105) for all students on campus. We conducted a study on a novel final assessment in which student were asked to reflect on their key learnings as well as their achievement of the course-level learning outcomes.

Recurrent involuntary memories are linked to mental health and modulated by age: Insights from computational text analysis

October 05, 2021

Talk (co-author), MDRS, Virtual

Recurrent memories are linked to individual differences (e.g., age, symptoms of mental health disorders) in terms of their phenomenology (subjective experience) and content (what people report remembering).

What are recurrent memories about? Understanding their contents and links to mental health using computational text analysis

June 17, 2021

Talk, CSBBCS, Montreal, QC

Researchers debate whether recurrent involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs; personal memories retrieved unintentionally and repetitively) are pathological or ordinary. We asked if content could distinguish between maladaptive and benign recurrent IAMs. Using structural topic models, a method of unsupervised machine learning, we show that topics in recurrent IAMs - and their links to mental health - are identifiable, distinguishable, and quantifiable.

Assessing impacts of Waterloo’s undergraduate mental health literacy course

April 27, 2021

Talk (co-author), University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON

In 2020, the Faculty of Health launched the University of Waterloo's first undergraduate course on mental health literacy so that students could earn course credit for learning about mental health self-care and support for others. We conducted three studies that build on early research conducted by two of the presenters, examining students' outcomes following taking this course.

Assessing Waterloo’s first undergraduate course on mental health literacy: Did students’ attitudes change over time?

November 05, 2020

Talk, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON

Does completion of a course on MHL have an effect on students' MHL-related attitudes, help-seeking intent, or perceived barriers to care? In a pre-post design, this study suggests that a course dedicated to MHL can have a significant, positive impact of several aspects of MHL in students. Further, our findings support AHS's commitment to offering AHS 105 to all students on campus in future terms.

University of Waterloo’s undergraduate course on mental health literacy

November 03, 2020

Talk, Centre for Innovation in Campus Mental Health, Toronto, ON

We describe the design and evaluation of the University of Waterloo's first Mental Health Literacy course for undergraduate credit. We conducted a study measuring indicators of students' mental health literacy (e.g., attitudes toward help-seeking) at the start and end of the course (N = 37). Some significant improvements were found, along with strongly positive student feedback.

Anxiety-provoking context scenes can reduce the context reinstatement effect

June 09, 2019

Talk (co-author), CSBBCS, Waterloo, ON

Reinstating the same context from encoding during retrieval has been shown to benefit memory. In two experiments, we investigated whether anxiety-provoking context scenes lessened the context reinstatement (CR) benefit. We found that reinstating anxiety-provoking contexts failed to benefit target memory. Results suggest that the benefit of reinstating a context, on target memory, depends critically on the characteristics of the reinstated context.

From tea cakes to trauma: Bridging gaps between involuntary memory and mental health

June 08, 2019

Talk, CSBBCS, Waterloo, ON

We investigated the properties of recurrent IAMs in general populations, and assessed their relation to mental health. We found that recurrent IAMs were experienced by most of our sample (52%), and that these memories were mostly negative in valence. Those reporting a negative IAM as their most frequently recurring also reported significantly more mental health concerns (e.g., posttraumatic stress, social anxiety, depression).

From tea cakes to trauma: Bridging gaps between involuntary memory and mental health

May 14, 2019

Talk, TAMeG, Toronto, ON

Are recurrent memories common in the general population? Can recurrent memories predict symptoms of mental health disorders? Can we better characterize recurrent memories using their autobiographical properties?

Altered working memory capacity for social threat words in high versus low social anxiety

February 23, 2019

Talk, INS, New York, NY

Differences in working memory capacity may lead to preferential maintenance of socially threatening material in individuals with high social anxiety. Here we used word span tasks, adapted from the digit span task, to assess working memory capacity for material of varying threat-relatedness, in individuals with high or low social anxiety. Our findings suggest that individuals high in social anxiety may fail to upregulate working memory capacity for social information due to the activation of socially threatening concepts.

Bias in long-term and working memory in individuals with high versus low social anxiety

October 06, 2018

Talk (co-author), MDRS, Toronto, ON

Do individuals with high social anxiety show altered memory function for social materials? We asked if semantic meaning (i.e., social threat) drives subsequent memory. In two experiments, we find biases in long-term memory as well as working memory that are social threat-specific, which could not be explained by valence, arousal, or semantic similarity.

Social anxiety enhances recognition of task-irrelevant threat words

May 15, 2018

Talk, TAMeG, Toronto, ON

Are highly socially anxious people easily distracted in general, or is this bias specific to socially threatening material? In a simultaneous target-distractor paradigm, we investigated if memory for targets and distractors was affected by threat-relatedness. We found that emory bias is specific to threat-related distractors in high social anxiety. When social anxiety is primed, attention and memory may be specifically heightened for irrelevant, socially threatening information.