What are nonverbal cues?

If you’ve been following us for a while, you have probably heard us talk about “nonverbal cues”. Have you ever wondered what that meant? 🤔 We in the DSEC Lab are particularly interested in understanding how we use nonverbal cues to express our emotions to others, and to make sense of other people’s emotions. Former directed lab student Rafaela Platkin put this post together to explain what nonverbal cues are, and why they are important! ✨ What questions do YOU have about nonverbal cues? Let us know in the comments below! 👋

Are there differences in how adults and adolescents perceive emotional expressions in the voice?

If you’ve been following us for some time (👋), you may already know that children and adolescents are less accurate than adults in vocal emotion recognition tasks, where they are asked to identify what another person is feeling based on their tone of voice. WHY might that be? 🤔 One potential explanation may be that youth and adults perceive vocal emotions differently 👂… which could influence how they interpret them in emotion recognition tasks. Flip through to read more about an earlier study that looked at this very question, and let us know what you think below! 👍 (Special thanks to Bingyi Lin, who put together this infographic about the study!) #research #developmentalpsychology #emotionrecognition #scicomm

Differences between children and adolescents in how accurately they recognize emotions

As we develop, our ability to understand others’ emotional states based on their nonverbal cues continues to grow. 📈 But, it seems that the capacity to interpret facial expressions of emotion develops earlier than the same ability with vocal expressions! Because this skill is still developing throughout adolescence, it might be especially hard for youth to make sense of others’ tone of voice. 🔊

Check out our post to learn more about these findings! (A big shout out to Reem Atallah for creating this post!) Any questions? Leave a comment below! 👇

#research #ygk #developmentalpsychology #psychology #development #adolescence #science

Bullying during adolescence

Bullying is a real problem for many children and adolescents. Youth who are victims of bullying, as well as those who witness bullying, can struggle with their mental health and experience poorer well-being. 🥀
Many research labs are interested in understanding more about how to prevent bullying from happening, and to help victims respond to provocation by peers. 🤝 For example, the DSEC Lab is currently running an online study (#LISTEN) to answer some of these questions: see link in bio for more details!
If you or someone you know needs help to deal with the consequences of bullying, check out the resources on the last slide (and visit prevnet.ca for more information). 💕 (Thanks to Silvia Zhou & Emma Ilyaz for putting this information together!)

What's in a voice?

Looking at the ability for teens to interpret and communicate affect, we found that teens are typically less accurate than adults at recognizing emotions from the tone of voice. This demonstrates the importance of explicitly communicating your emotions, especially with teenagers!

Are you wondering about current research findings on adolescent social and emotional development?

Are you wondering about current research findings on adolescent social and emotional development? If so then this page is for you! We have posts currated for the community which help break down current research in the field!