Blog Posts Tagged: developmental psychology

(Un)social rats: the role of dopamine and the amygdala in social adversity

With optogenetics and behavioral testing, researchers found a link between infant social adversity and decreased social behavior in the circuitry of the amygdala.

How does communication with strangers develop?

Various factors contribute to shaping social-emotional developmental trajectories, such as familiarity of the interaction partner, the child’s age, but also individual predispositions, such as temperament.

Early infant behavior development of hand preference

There are many reasons to study the development of hand preference in infants. For one thing, being left-handed can be an advantage in one-on-one sports such as tennis.

Five studies showing the power of multi-modal data in behavioral research

The advantages of using multimodal data over a single modality are that it reveals deeper insights and also if one modality fails there can be enough redundancy in the data to still make sense of it.

Anxiety and Autism

The EU-AIMS and AIMS-2-TRIALS projects have carried out some interesting studies teasing out the causes of anxiety in children with autism.

Challenging play behavior: does it still exist?

Although children tend to spend more time indoor in sitting activities, they need feelings of exhilaration for behavioral development. Researchers investigated how risky play behavior can be encouraged.

How does handedness relate to infant language development?

Developing motor skills appears to be related to language abilities. The research team of Sandy Gonzalez investigated whether consistency in handedness predicts receptive and expressive language.

Observing and analyzing repetitive movements in infants to detect autism

To examine if a specific repertoire of repetitive movements was present in children with autism, researchers used home videos to code the behaviors of the infants.

The role of mimicry in the development of social communication

Children learn from interacting with others, especially their parents. For example, reproducing the emotions that others express is part of that.

4 recent blog posts about understanding autism spectrum disorder

Our understanding of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has developed a great deal over recent years, but there is still much work to be done.

The role of inhibitory control on substance use in adolescence

Adolescents are vulnerable to risk-taking behaviors such as substance use. Dr. Roy Otten and his team examined how early childhood stress and inhibitory control influence the risk of adolescent substance use.

Working memory and emotion regulation in children with ADHD

How can we understand emotional reactivity in children with ADHD? In the current study, Tarle and her colleagues examined the relation between emotion regulation and working memory in children with and without this disorder.