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. Perceiving emotion in others helps us predict behavior and feeling states. The picture to the left was taken when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation visted the lab to recreate one of our studies for a documentary on touch.

How infants use emotional expressions to learn about the world

Do adults' momentary emotional expressions influence infants? In this study, we are interested to see how adults' emotional expressions impact 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 predict 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.

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 and what it predicts about infant development.