Have you ever wondered what it looks like inside the DSEC Lab? Join former research assistant Diana Romano as she takes a tour of the lab and talks about 5 different benefits of being an RA! These benefits include research skill development, building relationships, and academic and career advancements. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg! Watch this video to learn how else being an RA can benefit you! 🙌
Watch this video here.
Curious about how screens can impact youth’s emotional development? A study by Uhls et al. (2014) provides some insight into this question. In this experiment, a group of 6th graders attended a 5-day camp with no screen access 🏕️, while the control group continued with their usual daily activities. The emotion recognition skills of youth in both groups were measured before and after this 5-day period. They found that the youth that spent time in the no-screens summer camp showed bigger improvements in their emotion recognition skills compared to the control group.
Thank you to research assistant Yaein Kim for putting together this post!
Have you ever wondered about the brain 🧠, and how our neurons are able to communicate? The secret is neurotransmitters 🤫. Neurotransmitters are chemical signals that allow neurons to “talk to each other”. This communication system helps our brains process information. Watch this video created by research assistant Alessia Cataudella to learn about different types of neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Alessia explains the basic purposes of these neurotransmitters, and why they’re important for our brains and bodies to function properly!
Watch this video here.
Let’s talk about empathy! Empathy is a crucial skill needed for interpersonal communication and forming connections. 👯♀️ Have you ever wondered how certain factors impact our empathy? Studying these factors can help us to answer other important questions. For example, are girls really more empathic than boys? 🤔
Schwenk et al. decided to investigate this question to see how age, gender, and intelligence play a role in children’s cognitive and emotional empathy. Swipe through this post to see how they measured empathy and what they found! Thank you to RA Julia Guo for putting together this informative post.
Here at the DSEC Lab, part of our research includes collecting auditory data and analyzing the acoustic characteristics of speech. 🗣️ You’re probably wondering, why do we care about speech data? Our speech contains important information known as acoustic nonverbal cues, which includes pitch, intensity, and speech rate. Join directed lab student Sophie Ye as she defines pitch, explains different scenarios when our pitch may vary, and provides a demonstration of the software we use to analyze pitch in speech. 🎤
Watch this video here.
Take a moment to think about how you would define what “emotions” are. 🤔 If you found this difficult, don’t worry: you’re not alone. Even researchers disagree about the definition of ‘emotion’! Today, we’ll tell you about two competing theories in the field of emotion research: Basic Emotion Theory and Constructivist Emotion Theory. Swipe through this post to learn more about each theory, how they compare, and the criticisms that people have.
Thank you to research assistant Léa Francoeur and directed lab student Sach Grewal for making this informative post!
Have you ever wondered what parts of the brain process social and emotional information? 🧠 Join research assistant Olivia Merulla as she talks about a few brain regions that are involved in doing this. Specifically, she teaches us how the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and the amygdala contribute to understanding others’ social intent or emotional states! These brain regions are involved in super cool and important processes such as mentalizing (i.e., understanding other people’s thoughts, beliefs, and emotions), self-reflection, and emotion regulation! 🤯 Olivia also explains the superior temporal sulcus (STS), the insula, and the roles they play. You’ll learn how each region acts as a puzzle piece that works together with other regions to make sense of social and emotional cues in our social worlds. 🧩
Check out this video here.
Here at the DSEC Lab, we study emotional development in adolescence. One of the ways we do this is through examining the facial expressions people use to communicate emotional intent. Curious about how researchers are able to measure facial expressions? Check out this post by research assistant Selena Gabrielli that explores the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). The FACS uses facial action units to measure the characteristics of someone’s emotional expression. This helps researchers put numbers to participants’ facial expressions!
Welcome back to another instalment of Psychology Terms Made Easy 🙌! Have you ever thought about what it means for a facial expression to be prototypical? When we talk about prototypicality in facial expressions, we’re referring to typical facial characteristics and muscle movements that are commonly seen in stereotyped representations of emotions. Take happiness, for example 😁. Close your eyes and imagine someone feeling happy. Did you imagine them smiling 😊, or squinting their eyes 👀? These are typical facial characteristics used when expressing happiness!
Watch this video created by former Directed Lab student Paige Stockley to learn more about prototypicality!
#ThrowBackThursday: let’s throw it back to a classic experiment in developmental psychology! The visual cliff experiment was conducted in 1995 by Campos and colleagues to explore how infants 👶 interpret others’ emotional expressions. In this experiment, infants were placed on a special table that was designed to give the illusion of a visual cliff. The infants’ mother was on the other side of the “cliff”, expressing either a happy face 😁 or a fearful face 😨. Do you think any of the infants crossed the cliff?
Swipe through this post to see how the infants interpreted their mothers’ nonverbal cues! Thank you to research assistant Jacqueline Satok for creating this informative TBT post!
Have you ever heard the terms “encode” and “decode”? Join Honours thesis student, Keren Katz, as she explains the meaning of these words in the context of emotional expression. 😄😢😡 In this video, you’ll learn the definitions of encoding and decoding, the differences between these processes, and why they’re thought to be important for forming healthy relationships!
Check out this video here.
Curious about fMRI research? 🧠 Join former research assistant Mia Schubert as she explores fMRI basics. In this video🎬, you’ll learn all about key terms, why researchers choose to use fMRI in their research, and MRI safety. (Psst! fMRI stands for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and is a type of neuroimaging method we can use to understand the brain’s activation patterns!)
Check out this video here.
Have you ever wondered about the brain regions that are associated with producing and understanding facial expressions? 🧠 If so, you’ve come to the right place! Check out this video to become experts on these regions of the brain. You’ll learn about the motor cortex, the occipital face area, and much more!
Thank you to research assistants Olivia Merulla and Sarah Wong for making this fun stop-motion video! Check it out here.
Have you seen Inside Out 2? In this movie, Riley must learn how to navigate being a teenager and the new emotions that come with that. Fun fact - this movie accurately represents psychological research on emotions! Inside Out 2 does a great job of portraying some of the cognitive and emotional changes that happen during the teenage years, such as the development of anxiety and embarrassment. ☹️😳 Thank you to Honours thesis student Zoe Halpern for creating this video that showcases how psychological research is represented in mass media 🎬
#psychologyresearch #emotionresearch #insideout2 #psychologyinthemedia #QueensUniversity
Psychology terms made easy! 🙌 Our topic today is reward sensitivity. Reward sensitivity refers to how strongly you respond to or seek out rewards. Individuals can have high or low reward sensitivity, which in turn guides their behaviour. Did you know that different age groups have different levels of reward sensitivity? Learn all about it in this informative post created by former research assistant Kieran Bodnar!
How has your decision-making changed as you’ve aged? Let us know in the comments below! 👇
#research #rewardsensitivity #QueensUniversity #psychology #science
Think back to the last conversation that you had: what did you notice? 🤔 Maybe you noticed that the person you were talking to was smiling, or maybe they were avoiding eye contact. These are examples of nonverbal cues! 🙊
This post explains the different types of nonverbal cues and their importance in communication. Thank you to research assistant Selena Gabrielli for putting together this informative post! What questions do YOU have about nonverbal cues? Let us know in the comments below! 👇
#psychologyresearch #QueensUniversity #nonverbalcues #communication
Welcome to another installment of our This Vs. That Series! In this post, second-year Master’s student Peyton Nault describes the difference between facial 😃 and vocal 🎙️ emotion recognition. Emotion recognition is the ability to determine what emotion is being expressed from nonverbal cues like facial expressions and tone of voice. Swipe through the slides to explore processing differences and developmental differences between emotion recognition in these two nonverbal modalities.
To learn more about facial and vocal emotion recognition, check out our Spring Newsletter 📰🌻
#nonverbal #thisVSthat #facialVSvocal #emotionrecognition #emotion #communication
If you were to close your eyes and imagine 💭 someone feeling happy, what would their facial expression look like? Would the corners of the mouth be raised into a smile or their eyes squinted 😄? These facial movements make up the most common way of expressing happiness! Similarly, emotions such as sadness, anger, and fear all have common or typical ways of being expressed, a concept we refer to as prototypicality! Of course, it’s important to remember that most of the research these ideas are based on was done in Western parts of the world and the Global North. There are definitely some cultural differences in the use of facial expressions to communicate emotions!
If you are interested in learning more about prototypicality, swipe through these slides created by Directed Lab student Paige Stockley. At the end of the slides, think about what prototypical features you might see in a sad ☹️ or angry 😡 facial expression, and leave a comment below with your answer!
#prototypicality #emotions #psychology #research
Have you ever wondered how we can go from being relaxed and calm 😴 one minute to energetic and alert 👀 the next? In this episode of Psychology Terms Made Easy, DSEC Lab research assistant Keren Katz breaks down the difference between our sympathetic nervous system and our parasympathetic nervous system 🧠. These systems serve different functions, but work together to help prepare for and respond to different situations. In other words, they keep us balanced! ⚖️ Test your understanding in the comments: which system you would want activated when you see a bear 🐻 face to face in real life, versus when you are sitting watching a movie with a bear as the main character 🧸?
#science #brain #NervousSystem #psychology #PsychTermsMadeEasy
Last month, the DSEC Lab posted about adult emotion recognition, but have you ever wondered if infants 👶 have emotion recognition capabilities? For example, when an infant’s parent smiles or frowns, can the infant tell how their parent is feeling 👨🍼?
Emotion recognition is defined as the ability to interpret how other people are feeling based on their nonverbal cues. While infants can’t yet name the emotion they are recognizing in their parent’s expression, they can understand it. Infants use their parents’ emotional cues, such as a frown, to determine how they should respond to situations – a concept called social referencing!
Swipe through the slides to find out more about emotion recognition in infants and at what age this is thought to start. Thank you to directed lab student Zoe Halpern for putting this post together 😊.
#emotionrecognition #psychology #expressions #socialreferencing #development
