Explore projects in Social and Emotional Development!
These projects explore how individuals learn to navigate emotions, build relationships, and develop a sense of self over time. These projects examine key skills such as emotional regulation, empathy, social awareness, and interpersonal communication—foundations for well-being, academic success, and positive life outcomes. Research in this area may focus on early childhood, adolescence, or the influence of family, peers, schools, and communities on development. Many projects also study how culture, stress, and adversity shape emotional and social growth, and how targeted programs can support healthy development in diverse settings.
“Lovely children playing outside with toys” by Bramm Berkelmans is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International via Wikimedia Commons
- Peer Treatment across the Transition to Kindergarten: A test of Biological Sensitivity to Context TheoryProject Abstract/Summary Understanding successful transitions to kindergarten is a critical task that has clear implications for children’s well-being. Early adverse experiences appear to interfere with children’s school readiness. However, research has largely ignored a critical environmental context – the peer group – in the development of school readiness during the transition to kindergarten. This project is among the first to examine how both positive and negative peer treatment relate to multiple indicators of school readiness (i.e., academic skills, social skills,… Read more: Peer Treatment across the Transition to Kindergarten: A test of Biological Sensitivity to Context Theory
- Probing the origins of approach and avoidance processes: brain, behavioral, and contextual factorsProject Abstract/Summary The ability to appropriately match an emotional response to cues in the environment begins developing during infancy and is critical to mental health and well-being throughout the life span. Infants learn to approach positive stimuli, such as smiling at happy faces, and avoid dangerous or threatening stimuli, such as turning away from angry faces. The goal of the proposed research is to understand the brain basis of approach and avoidance processes during infancy and the role of parent-child… Read more: Probing the origins of approach and avoidance processes: brain, behavioral, and contextual factors
- Collaborative Research: Trust across diverse contexts in early childhoodProject Abstract/Summary Trust – the belief in the truth, reliability, or ability of another person to do a promised action – is a cornerstone of everyday social interactions and relationships. Trust is also vital to many aspects of children’s development: they must decide who they should trust in order to learn new information (i.e., epistemic trust) and who they can trust for social support, reassurance, or to keep a promise (i.e., social trust). This project investigates how young children decide… Read more: Collaborative Research: Trust across diverse contexts in early childhood
- Developmental relations between emotion input and emotion perceptionProject Abstract/Summary Understanding and interpreting emotional expressions is important for social interactions. Emotion understanding helps people respond to others’ needs, make predictions about social interactions, and even control emotional responses. Research shows that children who are better at understanding emotions are perceived as more socially skilled by their teachers, more likable by their peers, and are better able to navigate aggressive interactions. However, it is not well understood how infants and young children learn about the emotions of others, mostly… Read more: Developmental relations between emotion input and emotion perception