This on-going research area investigates how emotions are recognised from early childhood through to late adulthood and how, throughout this time, we manage our emotions and the impressions we want others to have of us. We are also interested in investigating how we can explain individual differences in how people recognise basic and complex emotions throughout the lifespan. For instance, can differences in emotion recognition be explained by if you are a boy or a girl, if you are popular or rejected, if you are comfortable or uncomfortable in social interactions, etc.
In addition to the social and emotional factors that may explain individual differences, we are also interested in exploring how the development of emotion processing in the brain may relate to performance on emotion recognition tasks. There is little research that explores how these two factors are related throughout childhood, but both have a similar developmental timeline.
Current projects:
Past projects:
- Children’s recognition of emotions and the development of emotion processing in the brain
- Gender differences in the development of emotion recognition
- Recognition of genuine happiness
- Sex differences in adults’ recognition of complex emotions
- Social and emotional factors related to emotion recognition in childhood
Schools projects (2018):
Schools projects (2017):