Madi Maguire (BA ’23) is still a few weeks away from starting her PhD in Psychology at Brock, but she already has a head start on her research.

The Psychology master’s graduand will continue her work on childhood procrastination, a topic she says has followed her throughout her life, from an eighth-grade speech to her graduate thesis project.

“I’ve always been curious about what contributes to procrastination, especially in kids,” she says. “The ultimate goal of the work we’re doing is to help families and educators recognize when procrastination is becoming a more persistent problem and to respond with compassion and effective, accessible strategies rather than just discipline.”

Supporting her research is a prestigious $150,000 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, which was announced July 9 by the Government of Canada. In total, 36 Brock student researchers received more than $2.4 million in Canadian Graduate Scholarships (CGS) and Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships for their innovative and impactful work.

The funding was awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the federal agencies that support and invest in world-class Canadian research.

As part of the recent Tri-Agency announcement, Brock faculty members also received $1.9 million in NSERC funding and $7 million in SSHRC Insight Grants, Insight Development Grants and a Partnership Grant.

For Maguire, receiving the Vanier Scholarship has been both an honour and a motivator.

“It was a total surprise, but it gave me confidence that this work matters. Not just to me, but to many others as well,” she says. “There’s still so much research to be done before we can put particular strategies for combating procrastination into actual practice with kids. But someone has to do the groundwork, which is what I’m aiming to do with my PhD research.”

Working under the supervision of Psychology Professor Caitlin Mahy, Maguire is building on research showing procrastination may begin far earlier than previously thought, potentially as young as the age of three.

While most existing studies focus on adults, Maguire’s research investigates the development of procrastination in children aged three to 12, with her master’s work specifically examining the relationship between procrastination in early childhood and inattention and hyperactivity.

“If we can understand how procrastination develops, we can help manage it before it starts to affect areas such as health, work and finances,” she says. “By identifying the abilities related to procrastination early on in life, we can determine what supports can help kids showing signs of more chronic procrastination before those patterns are deeply established.”

But working with young participants can be challenging. To address this, Maguire gathers information from parents and uses playful, game-based behavioural tasks in her studies to engage participants and measure their decision-making over time.

“Designing tasks that feel like games helps us connect with kids in ways they understand,” she says. “And parents are key partners in giving us insight into the kinds of tasks kids put off in day-to-day life, like getting ready for bed or putting away their toys.”

Maguire is also challenging misconceptions in the field.

“Some parents might see their child delaying a task and think they’re just being lazy. But it also could be the case that the child is overwhelmed with how big the problem is, or they don’t know where to start. Helping parents learn that their child’s procrastination could actually be a self-regulation issue is an important first step to tackling it.”

Through her work, Maguire hopes to someday create accessible, evidence-based tools that parents, teachers and communities can use to support kids, including those in neurodiverse populations.

She’s also looking to refine existing measures of procrastination in children and explore community partnerships with organizations such as Pathstone Mental Health and local school boards to expand the real-world impact of her research.

“I’m very eager for the next four years and aim to work towards developing practical strategies that can be made easily available to families,” she says. “Therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy have been shown to help reduce procrastination in adults but haven’t been tested with kids and aren’t always accessible. If we can develop tools that people can implement at home or in schools, we can help a much larger population of kids.”

Recipients of the 2024 to 2025 Tri-Agency competitions

Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship

• Madeline Maguire (BA ’23), Psychology (Life Span Development): “The development of procrastination across childhood and its relation with attentional difficulties”

Postdoctoral Fellowships

CIHR

• Katelyn Battista, Applied Health Sciences: “Examining inequitable mental health consequences of substance use on gender diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged adolescents: A collaboration between two of Canada’s largest youth health studies”

SSHRC

• Erin Gallagher-Cohoon, Child and Youth Studies, “Queerspawn: A Queer History of Childhood, 1970s-2000″

Doctoral level: Canada Graduate Scholarships (CGS-D), Postgraduate Scholarship (PGS-D) and SSHRC Fellowships

CGS to Honour Nelson Mandela:

• Rebeka Ann Norman, Child and Youth Studies: “Exploring Relationships Between Young Carers and Parent(s) with Mental Illness: A Critical Participatory Action Research Project”

CIHR CGS-D:

• Valerie Pagnotta (BSc ’21, MSc ’23), Applied Health Sciences (Behavioural and Population Health): “Income inequality and its association with childhood injury in Canada”

CIHR Travel Award:

• Farhan (Sunny) Qureshi (BSc ’22, MA ’24), Psychology (Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience): “Sex-Specific Long-Term Health Consequences of Prenatal Alcohol Exposure: An Exploratory Study”

NSERC CGS-D:

• Alicia Piazza (BSc ’21), Biological Sciences (Neurobiology and Physiology): “Examining functional retinoid signaling in an invertebrate nervous system”
• Alyssa Thibeault (MA ’23), Psychology (Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience): “Delineating pictorial and non-pictorial aspects of visual working memory and imagery in behaviour and neural activity”

NSERC PGS-D:

• Aurora Battis (BSc ’20, MSc ’23), Applied Health Sciences (Health Biosciences): “Assessing the sensory contributions to the flexion-relaxation phenomenon.”

SSHRC CGS-D:

• Elizabeth Colantoni (BA ’20, BA ’23), Interdisciplinary Humanities (Culture and Aesthetics): “Cosimo ‘Il Vecchio’ de’ Medici’s Politics-as-Performance”
• Hanna Puffer (BA ’22, MA ’24), Psychology (Social / Personality): “Power and privilege: Do masculinity-threatened men lash out at women and culturally successful men?”
• Katrynne Rice (BA ’23, MA ’24), Interdisciplinary Humanities (Ways of Knowing): “Queering the rink: Canadian women’s ice hockey and national identity”
• Catherine Susin (BA ’17, BEd ’17, MEd ’18), Educational Studies (Cognition and Learning): “Striving for ‘the best of both worlds’: Combining curricular integration approaches in literacy and mathematics teacher education”

SSHRC Doctoral Fellowships

• Tabeer Afzal, Psychology (Life Span Development): “The Influence of Adolescent Reputation on Honesty Evaluations”
• Jessica Goddard (MSc ’23), Applied Health Sciences (Behavioural and Population Health): “A Mixed-Methods Study of Emotion Regulation Among Siblings of Children with a Mental Disorder”

Master’s level: Canada Graduate Scholarships (CGS-M)

CIHR:

• Angelo Ilersich (BPH ’24), Applied Health Sciences (Health Sciences): “Quantifying the association between fine particulate matter pollution and lower respiratory tract infections in Ontario children aged 0-4 years using proportional hazard modelling”
• Raneem Kalbouna (BSc ’24), Applied Health Sciences (Health Sciences): “Racial Disparities in Childhood Adversity and the Onset of Asthma in Young Adults”

CIHR Travel Award:

• Alison Randell, Psychology (Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience): “Effects of levonorgestrel on anxiety-like behaviour and its neural mechanisms in adolescent rats”

NSERC:

• Sarah Bellaflor (BSc ’24), Applied Health Sciences (Health Sciences): “Investigating Amyloid Precursor Protein processing in ovariectomized human amyloidbeta mice supplemented with 17beta-estradiol”
• Felicia Bouaban (BSc ’24), Applied Health Sciences (Kinesiology): “Exploring the vasodilator-vasoconstrictor interactions regulating blood vessel elasticity during exercise in humans”
• Emma Ratke (BKin ’25), Applied Health Sciences (Kinesiology): “Leveraging High Density Surface Electromyography to characterize fundamental changes in trunk muscle activation topography and onset latency in pre- and postpartum females”
• Julia Spafford (BSc ’25), Applied Health Sciences (Kinesiology): “Investigating the chemoreflex mechanisms regulating asynchronous sympathetic action potential discharge in humans”

SSHRC:

• Shajeena Balasingam, Psychology (Life Span Development): “The Impact of Perceptual Load on Memory Recall of Child Witnesses”
• Tammy Borgen-Flood (BRLS ’24), Applied Health Sciences (Recreation, Sport and Community): “Sport participation policy in Canada: An interprovincial comparative analysis”
• Emma Craib, History: “Jewish Historical Commissions in Post-War Europe”
• Serena D’Angelo (BA ’24), Applied Disability Studies (Leadership, Diversity, Community and Culture): “Barriers to Entry: The Experiences of Service Dog Handlers Navigating Public Spaces in Canada”
• Kylie Dennis, Child and Youth Studies: “Play Through a Carnivalesque Lens: How Children are Redefining Play for Themselves”
• Khadija Farooq, Social Justice and Equity Studies: “No Peace, No Silence: Exploring the Embodied Experiences of Palestinian-Allied Student Activists in Southern Ontario Universities”
• Nicholas Lacoste (BSM ’23), Applied Health Sciences (Sport Management): “Indigenous Hockey Sovereignty: Examining the Canadian Indigenous Sport Landscape”
• Jessica Malcolm, Applied Health Sciences (Kinesiology): “Does psychological need fulfillment relate to sport persistence in adolescent to young adult female athletes”
• Connor O’Rourke (BA ’24), Classics (Art and Archaeology): “Mortuary Transformations in Minoan Crete: Purpose-Built Funerary Pithoi at Sphoungaras and Pacheia Ammo”
• Kathryn Pye (BA ’24), Classics (Text and Culture): “Narratological Law Reform and Social Practice: A Comparative Evaluation of the Moral Legislation of Augustus and the US Supreme Overturn of Roe v Wade”
• Sydney Wu, Applied Disability Studies (Applied Behaviour Analysis): “Improving Executive Functioning in Autistic Children”
• Victoria Zinga (BA ’24), Game Studies: “Imagineering through the lens of Game Design”

SSHRC Black Scholars Initiative

• Mikayla McEwan (BA ’24), Applied Health Sciences (Kinesiology), “Likes, follows and feelings: Unpacking the role of social media use on post-secondary varsity student-athletes’ psychosocial development and well-being using arts-based methods”

SSHRC Indigenous Scholars Awards and Supplements Pilot Initiative

• Jalen Edwards, Child and Youth Studies, “More Than the Game: How Young Athletes from Single-Mother Households Experience High Performance Sport Climates”