Current Studies Page

Study 1: How infants use emotional expressions to learn about
the world

In this study, we are interested to see how adults' emotional expressions influence how infants understand the world around them. Every day, infants encounter objects and situations about which they know little about.
Around the end of the first year of life, infants
begin to use the emotional expressions of an
adult to help them figure out how they should
behave and think about ambiguous objects and situations. We are currently studying how infants begin to use others'
emotional expressions to regulate their behavior and how long lasting
these effects are.

Study 2: How television is understood by infants

There are preciously few experimental investigations examining what infants understand about television. This study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is designed to investigate how television impacts infant behavior and cognitive development.

Study 3: How touch communicates distinct emotions in adulthood

In this series of studies, we're interested in investigating how distinct
emotions are communicated via touch in adulthood. To date, we have found
that several emotions are communicated via touch, but interestingly, they are different than the emotions communicated via the face and voice. The picture below was taken when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation visted the lab to recreate one of our studies for a documentary on touch.