Current Research
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BabyDevLab
Current projects
Blaise Study
Baby Learning and Infant Sensitivity to the Environment
This project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, looks at the different types of home environment that different children experience at home, and examines how this affects a child's concentration, learning and emotion regulation capacities. Participating in the project involves coming into the UEL BabyDevLab for a half-day lab session, where we will measure your child's brain activity. We also conduct a one-day home visit, for which a researcher will visit your home in the morning to drop off some specially designed clothing for you and your child to wear! The clothing contains a built-in microphone, and video camera, and a built-in stress monitor. Using it, we will record how your levels of stress in your body, and those of your baby, vary over the course of a typical day.
JDIL Study
Early social word-learning
This project, funded by a H2020 Marie Curie fellowship, looks at dyadic interactions between infants and their caregivers during early word-learning. We know very little about the neural substrates of how information is shared between caregivers and infants during early social learning. The aim of this project is to study how dynamic social interactions support attention and learning during infancy from a dyadic perspective. Participating in the project involves coming into the UEL BabyDevLab for a two hour session, during which we will measure both your brain activity, and your child's brain activity while you play with toys.
ONACSA Study
Joint parent-infant brain activity
Most infants, and young children, spend the majority of their early waking lives in the company of others. But, for practical reasons, almost everything that we know about how the brain subserves early attention and learning comes from studies that examined brain function in one individual at a time. In this 5-year project, funded by the European Research Council, we will be tracking a series of children longitudinally, and recording joint parent-child brain activity during shared early attention and learning at a variety of different ages.
Childhood Anxiety
Early detection and prevention of childhood anxiety
This project, funded by a London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership award, aims to improve our understanding of early development in children at risk of developing anxiety disorders. In particular, it looks at how different parenting styles can affect a child's likelihood of developing anxiety problems. This project is based at the Institute of Psychiatry (King's College) in collaboration with the UEL BabyDevLab.
ELSA Study
Individual differences in infant emotion responses
Individual differences in both emotion reactivity and regulation come together to
The
Environmental sensitivity, developmental-context and sustained attention (ELSA)
Children are not equally susceptible to rearing and other contextual experiences and
The project is funded by the Economic and Social
Dynamic Social Interactions
New insights into how the infant brain subserves dynamic social interactions
Almost everything we know about how attention 'happens' in the brain has come from studying individuals in isolation. However, most early attention and cognitive learning takes place in shared contexts, during social interactions with a partner. We know little of the neural mechanisms by which information is shared between babies' and parents' brains while they engage in social interaction.
The project is funded by a Research Project Grant from the Leverhulme Trust.
