NEW Study at the DSEC Lab

The DSEC Lab has just launched our new DETECT-AF study!

We are looking for 12- to 15-year-olds to participate in an in-person study. We are interested in investigating how teens grow the ability to understand other people’s emotions, based on their facial expressions and tone of voice. The study involves 2 x 2-hour visits. In the first visit, we will ask participants to bring along one of their friends and caregivers. Teens will be asked to complete an emotional expression task, memory task, answer prompts about their thoughts during the study, complete a computerized “attention game”, and fill out questionnaires. Friends and caregivers will be asked to do an emotional expression task and fill out questionnaires too!. On their second visit, teen participants will complete an emotional recognition and rating task in an MRI scanner (participants will be screened to ensure they can complete an MRI scan safely). We will also collect a hair sample as a measure of pubertal status. Additionally, participants will be asked to come back for a second set of visits 1 year later. Youth will receive $100 for the first set of visits (and a picture of their brain!), and $120 for the second set. Their friend will receive $40 for accompanying them to the first visit, and parents will receive $20 and be provided parking vouchers for Queen’s campus. Contact dseclab@queensu.ca for more information or visit our ‘Get Involved’ page to sign-up!

The DSEC Lab has a new workshop with Let's Talk Science

Teachers and educators can request our NEW workshop with Let’s Talk Science, entitled “Let’s Talk Emotional Communication”. In this workshop, we will walk youth through the research process, including developing research questions, forming hypotheses, coming up with a research method, and arriving at conclusions!

The workshop will also involve discussing emotions and nonverbal communication, such as the use of facial expressions and tone of voice.

To request our workshop, use the following link:

We are available for both in-person and online workshops :)

We’ve launched the second visit of our EXPRESS Longitudinal study!

This past October, the DSEC Lab launched the second visit to our EXPRESS study. Participants who completed the study last year are starting to be invited back for their second visits a year later from when they first came. Our team is so excited to welcome participants back for the second part of our study. This visit will involve an emotional expression task as well as a conversation task with a caregiver and a friend!

If your child participated in our EXPRESS-1 study, be sure to keep an eye out for an email from us! We hope to see you back in the lab soon :)

New article by lab member Jay Burns

Congratulations are in order! Former directed lab student (and current volunteer member of the team!) Jay Burns published a first-authored paper on hormone therapy, as part of his work with Dr. Sari van Anders at Queen's (van Anders lab website). Jay summarized his paper's contribution as follows:

“Hormone therapy (a.k.a. hormone replacement therapy) is one of the most commonly used forms of transition-related medical care. In this review, we synthesize the current literature. We find that the most well-established changes are initial changes to libido and increased sexual satisfaction, likely due to increased body satisfaction. However, we note that while hormone therapy is a medical process, to fully understand its impacts, research must incorporate a sociocultural lens.”
— Jay Burns