Research
Present Interests
Autism - Autism is a neurodevelopment disorder that affects 1 in 54 children in the US today. Features of Autism include social deficits and communication difficulties, stereotyped or repetitive behaviors and interests, sensory issues, and in some cases, cognitive delays. Through Clemson's Creative Inquiry initiative, the ARC Lab has been exploring the etiologies, symptoms, and perceptions of Autism Spectrum Disorder. For more details on our current research projects and to learn how you can get involved, please visit our lab page: Autism Research at Clemson Laboratory.
Past Research
As a graduate student in Developmental Psychology at The University of Connecticut, I dedicated my time exploring processes related emotion signaling through 4 avenues of research:
1. Infant Emotion: Because crying signals infant distress to caregivers, I became interested in the types of behaviors caregivers perform to soothe a crying infant (e.g., hold, talk to, feed, check diaper, give pacifier, demonstrate object, etc.), and what could potentially affect this process for adults (e.g., mood, emotional state, ability to mimic, etc.). Our research has shown that typical adults, who have increased negative mood responses to infant cries, behave differently (talking more and using more tactile stimulating) in a caregiving simulation than do adults who are less emotionally affected by infant crying. This research also shows that the infant cry is a powerful signal that is not easily disrupted by embodied manipulation, but is affected by the mode of presentation (i.e., audio, visual or audio/visual presentation).
2. Adult Emotion Perception: Facial expressions are functional, communicative, and universal. Some researchers assert that certain “basic emotions” are discrete (separate from one another) while other researchers believe all emotions are comprised of two or three underlying dimensions (e.g., arousal and valence). To pit these two theories against one another, we asked adults to sort gradations of emotional expressions (i.e., happy, sad, anger, fear, surprise, disgust) into 2, 3, and 5 piles. We scaled the results using multidimensional scaling to see whether the gradations were spread out on the dimension of arousal and valence. Our results show that fear looks like a unique stimulus that is more discrete, while the other emotions lie nicely on two continua.
3. Preschoolers’ Facial Expressions: There is compelling evidence that children begin to form mental categories for basic emotions between the ages of 3 and 5 years, and so we recruited children in this age range for our studies (Widen & Russell, 2008). By looking at facial expressions using Ekman, Friesen and Hager’s Facial Action Coding System (as opposed to verbal labels for emotional expressions of others), we see that children understand situations and contexts of emotional expressions even before they are able to demonstrate this knowledge with their words. In short, whereas in language comprehension precedes production, when talking about emotions, production (of facial expression) precedes comprehension (verbal labels).
4. Temper Tantrums: Finally, as a graduate student, I simultaneously explored vocal and behavioral expressions within temper tantrum episodes. Our lab has worked closely with Dr. Michael Potegal’s lab at the University of Minnesota on questions related to acoustic and behavioral features of temper tantrums in typically developing children. Unlike behavioral measures of tantrums which seem to suggest that children experience an early rise in anger that gives way to sadness and comfort seeking near the end of the tantrum, work from our lab shows that acoustics of child vocalizations do not follow this pattern (Green, Whitney, & Potegal, 2011).
I have been able to share my work through symposia and posters at professional conferences (Society for Research in Child Development and International Conference for Infant Studies) as well as recently by submitting my findings to key journals within the field of developmental psychology.