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

The way you talk to your infant could be related to their language development

Parents tend to speak to their young babies using “babytalk”, which researchers call “infant-directed speech”. 👶 This is thought to help promote bonding, attention, emotion processing, and language development in children. Former lab coordinator Emma Ilyaz put together an infographic describing the results of one of our studies on the impact of infant-directed speech (during a parent-child play session) on children’s later language abilities. Let us know what questions you have about this below! 🧑‍🍼

#research #parentchildinteraction #parenting #vocalcues #parentese #babytalk #languagedevelopment

Reward system in the brain

Welcome back to our second installment of our Brain & Emotions series! 🧠 This episode is about the reward system. There are a number of regions in the brain that tend to activate when we encounter rewarding things. 🍭 Adolescence is often accompanied by heightened response to reward in this brain system. How does it work? ❓ Swipe through to learn more! (Special thanks to former DSEC Lab volunteer Bingyi Lin for her work in creating these slides!)

#psychology #neuroscience #research #explainittome #brain #reward #adolescence

3 acoustic properties of the voice

One big focus of the DSEC Lab’s work is to better understand how we communicate emotions and attitudes through our tone of voice. 🗣️ Beyond the words we say, *how* we say something matters! 🗯️ But, how do we measure that “how”? PhD student Daniel Nault put together a primer of the 3️ main characteristics of the voice that can be combined to communicate emotional meaning. Swipe through the slides to learn more! 👉

#psychology #research #explainittome #acoustics #voice #speechanalysis #prosody #primer

Psychology terms made easy: Attentional biases

New post in our Psychology Terms Made Easy series… on attentional biases! The DSEC Lab is interested in how humans direct their attention to different things in our social environments. 👀 Certain things (like threatening faces, for example) are more likely to draw our attention than others. ❗ Is everyone likely to show attentional biases? Are some people more likely than others to experience this? Check out these slides by DSEC Lab directed research student Olivia Merulla for some answers to these questions! 🕵️

Let us know what questions you have for us in the comments below! What terms should we cover next? 🤗

#PTME #research #psychology #attention #explain

How do we measure facial expressions?

How do we measure facial expressions? 😀 DSEC Lab volunteer Kate Cullen put together a brief explanation of two methods researchers can use to measure someone’s facial movements. 📐 Although we don’t know for sure what a particular facial movement means (a smile could indicate feelings of joy, but also politeness or sarcasm!), others’ facial expressions are part of the rich social signals that we humans try to interpret as we move around the world. 🎭

You might already know that the DSEC Lab is interested in how we *learn* to use facial expressions to communicate nonverbally with others. We are currently recruiting 10-15 participants for the EXPRESS-1 study, which focuses on just that! 🌟 You can find more information about the study and how to sign up in the link in bio.

#research #YGK #Kingston #developmentalpsychology #emotions

Get to know your brain: what parts of the brain process social and emotional information?

Our brain allows us to make sense of our environment and guides our behaviour. How does it do this? 🧠 These slides are brief overviews of some key regions of the brain that work together to process all the social and emotional information we encounter in our daily lives. Think about it: your brain has to detect, interpret, and respond to lots of information from other people… including their smiles or frowns, the content of what they say to us, and the context we are in! 🤯

Think of this as a primer to your brain in its social environment. But, make sure to check out the last slide: none of these brain regions work alone! 🧩

Shout out to @DSECLab volunteer and former directed lab student Jay Burns for this guide of the social brain! Have you heard of these brain regions before? ❔

#psychology #neuroscience #brain #research

Psychology terms made easy: Nonverbal encoding

Welcome to a new series: Psychology Terms Made Easy! 🙌 We’ll be breaking down the terms we use for concepts we study in the lab. First up: nonverbal encoding! 🎭 Flip through the slides to see an explanation of this concept, and an example of when you would be encountering nonverbal encoding in the real world!

Shout out to Honours student Sarah Robichaud for her work in creating this installment of #PTME! What terms do you want us to tackle next? 😁

What is facial expression analysis and how does it help identify emotions?

In our previous posts, we’ve talked about how facial expressions can be measured using electromyography or automated facial movement coding software. 🖥️ Today, DSEC Lab volunteer Logan Goldring explains how one of those programs works! How do we quantify facial expressions? 📏 Flip through these slides to find out!

📢 Something to note: our lab is currently using this type of software to understand how teenagers and adults express their emotions. 🎭 Visit the link in bio if you are interested in being a participant for this study! 🤝

#research #psychology #developmentalpsychology #emotion #explainittome #YGK #YGKstudies #YGKresearch #YGKfamilies #kingstonON

What is fMRI and how do researchers use it to study the brain?

Have you ever heard of ✨ fMRI ✨? It stands for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging! This is a tool that neuroscientists use to understand the brain’s structure and how it works. 🧠 Flip through this slide deck for more info on how fMRI works, and how it was used in one of our lab’s studies to understand how youth’s brains respond to emotional faces and voices! 👉 (Special thanks to Reem Atallah for putting these helpful slides together!)

Have you ever been in an fMRI study? Let us know below! 🤷‍♂️

Understanding the amygdala and its emotional functions

What is the amygdala?! 🧠 Neuroscientists have spent a lot of time trying to understand how this part of the brain works! We know that the amygdala responds to important things in our environment, and that its shape and function change across development. Flip through the slides made by DSEC Lab volunteer Bingyi Lin to learn more! 👉

Do children and adults use their voices differently to communicate their emotions to others?

Have you ever wondered whether children and adults express emotions in the same way? 🎭 Think of a toddler getting frustrated with a toy that won’t work, or of a teenager being angry about the rules their parents set. Is their expression of anger similar to that of an angry adult? 💭 This 2017 study looked at whether teenagers and adults used their voice differently when asked to communicate different emotions vocally (meaning, using their tone of voice). 🗣️ Speech analysis of their recordings showed that the two age groups, in fact, were NOT equivalent in the way they used pitch (how high or low your voice sounds) to express various emotions. 🤯 The results of this study suggest that teenagers don’t express their emotions in the same way adults do. This is important to keep in mind when interacting with adolescents! 💬 Have you noticed this in your daily life? Let us know in the comments below! (Thank you to Daniel Nault and Olivia Merulla for preparing these slides!) #research #ygk #developmentalpsychology #psychology #development #adolescence #science

How does intensity of someone's voice affect how we interpret their emotions?

Think back to the last time you felt angry: how did you express it? Like all emotions, anger can be expressed with high emotional intensity (screaming, yelling 🤬) or with low emotional intensity (seething, annoyance 😠). How easy is it for listeners to recognize that someone is feeling angry at these different levels of intensity? 📈 And, what about other emotions? This post covers the findings from one of our recent studies looking at how emotional intensity affects the way listeners interpret vocal expressions of emotion. We found that listeners’ ability to correctly say what emotion the speaker was feeling improved with increasing emotional intensity… but that this pattern was different for different emotions. 🧮 Interesting, no? Tell us what you think in the comments below! 👇 (Special thanks to former @DSECLab Honours student Julia Stratton for preparing this post!)

How do other people know when we're feeling angry or upset?

How do other people know when we're feeling angry or upset? 🎭 Beyond the words we use to communicate, our nonverbal cues (like our facial expression, or the tone of voice we use) can also help others to understand how we are feeling. What we say is only one piece of the puzzle... the way we say something also matters! #nonverbal #communication (Thanks to Daniel Nault & Jay Burns for creating these slides!)

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!)