This post, requesting the assistance of KFN members in a study on how birders learn, has been approved for distribution by the KFN executive.
Hello Kingston Field Naturalists, this is Erik, the neuroscience researcher at U of T/Baycrest who got in touch back in 2020 about our online studies for birders. You kindly distributed our flyer back then and we had a few folks from your group participate in the research, which I’m excited to say should be published in the next few months. There is an article about the broader research program in the Ontario Field Ornithologists newsletter, here’s a link in case people are interested:
http://www.ofo.ca/library/serve/on-39-3/index.html?page=12
I also wanted to say that we have a few new studies online now (and even a brain-imaging study of birders, although Toronto is probably a bit far for most of your members). If you’d be willing to distribute again, I’m attaching a new flyer with participation/contact details. This is mostly geared towards intermediate/experienced birders, or people without any real bird ID experience who are just curious about birds. We are working towards a future study that will be more appropriate for relatively new birders but don’t have that ready quite yet. We got very positive feedback from the last study and I’m glad we’ve been able to sustain this collaboration with Ontario birders.
Thanks for your help spreading the word about our research last time– please let me know if you have any questions.
Regards,Erik
–Erik Wing,
PhD Research Fellow
Rotman Research Institute
