General seminar in psychology, with Nicholas Judd
Seminar
Date: Wednesday 3 December 2025
Time: 13.00 – 14.00
Location: Seminar room Tranbär (Cranberry)
On Wednesday, 3 December, 2025, 13:00-14:00, Nicholas Judd, Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, will speak about "The effect of wildfire smoke exposure on adolescent development".
The seminar will take place in seminar room Tranbär (Cranberry), House 4, 3rd floor, Albano. Please note the time, 13:00–14:00.
Organizer of this seminar is the Division of Psychobiology and Epidemiology.
Contact: Håkan Fischer
Language: English
Abstract
A major public health concern is the adverse effects of air pollution. Fundamental research suggests a mechanistic link between greater pollution (e.g., PM2.5) and adverse health effects.
However, most population-level research has used neighborhood pollution indicators. These are problematic, as they are heavily confounded with a myriad of other socioeconomic and individual-level characteristics – making it near impossible to isolate pollutions causal impact. Here, we leverage a unique source of air pollution to better estimate the true impact of air pollution: Wildfires.
We construct wildfire smoke exposure measures (cumulative perinatal and childhood) for 9806 children in the Adolescent Brain Development Consortium (ABCD). Using confirmatory factor analysis we make a measure of cognitive performance from 4 tasks across four waves of ABCD (ages 10, 12, 14, 16). For our structural neural measures, we test both global (mean cortical thickness and total surface area) and regional areas defined by the Desikan-Killiany cortical atlas.
Crucially, our aim is to determine how prior smoke exposure impacts developmental trajectories (i.e., slopes) therefore, we use linear mixed effects modeling. Childhood smoke exposure showed broad effects on cognitive and neural developmental trajectories. These effects survive a series of robustness tests, yet we find no effect from perinatal exposure. Our results signify a step towards separating air pollution from socioeconomic factors.
About the General seminars in psychology
This series of seminars is a collaboration between the six research divisions at the Department of Psychology. Local, national and international researchers are invited to speak of current research subjects.
The seminars are held on Wednesdays at 14:00–15:00 onsite in Albano and/or online in Zoom. Extra seminars can also be held on other weekdays or hours, among these the so called half-time seminars in the Doctoral Program in Psychology.
Last updated: November 21, 2025
Source: Department of Psychology