Have you seen the viral "wow, okay" trend? 🤔 It's the one where you say the same sentence in 4 different tones, changing only your nonverbal expressions. Well, it turns out that's exactly the kind of thing we study here in the DSEC Lab. 🥳 We asked members of our lab to give the trend a try!

We spend a lot of time talking about communication. Listening is a key component of good communication! 👂️ Research has found that people who experience active listening feel more understood and more satisfied with their conversations. 😀

Juliana Ricciuti (She/Her) - QU’27 in Psychology. Juliana is a third-year psychology student joining the DSEC Lab as a volunteer RA! She is interested in the biological mechanisms underlying the development of emotional communication and how emotional communication affects our quality of life.

Welcome back to Part 2 of our mini-mic series with research assistants Alessia Cataudella and Madhureema Balasubramani Rupa as they ask PSYC 100 students some psychology trivia 🧠 Question of the day: Are teenagers better or worse at reading emotions than adults? 🙂😠🙁

Question of the day: When do babies first learn to recognize emotions on faces? 👶👀 Check out Part 1 of our two-part mini-mic series with research assistants Alessia Cataudella and Madhureema Balasubramani Rupa as they interview PSYC 100 students ✨

Olivia Murray (she/her) - QU '27 in Psychology and Sociology. Olivia is a third-year psychology student and a volunteer research assistant in the DSEC Lab this year! Olivia takes an interest in young adult clinical and social psychology, as well as forensic psychology and how these fields intersect.

People often believe that smiling might make you feel happier! 😀 The facial feedback hypothesis is the theory that our emotions can be influenced by our facial expressions. Coles and colleagues (2019) conducted a meta-analysis of the facial feedback literature to explore this hypothesis!

Research is a team effort, and we're lucky to have such an incredible one ✨ We work hard and we have fun while doing it. A big thank you to all of our students, past and present, for your hard work and contributions to the DSEC Lab. 😄 Your impact is felt every day!

We recognize people using a combination of facial, vocal, & contextual cues. What happens when you’re left with just one? Watch Dr. Morningstar try to map the acoustics of our team’s voices to their identity—a tricky task that highlights how multiple sources of information help us recognize others!

Reyna Okumura (she/her) — QU’27 in Psychology and Sociology Reyna is a third-year psychology/sociology joint Honours student volunteering as a research assistant in the DSEC Lab. She is interested in how people communicate, on individual and societal scales.

Congratulations to Alessia Cataudella, who has been named a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Storytellers Challenge finalist! 🎉 Watch to learn more about our lab’s ongoing projects. We are so proud to celebrate Alessia’s achievement and the dedication it reflects!

The DSEC Lab’s spring newsletter is now available! ☀️ Click the link in our bio to learn more about our ongoing studies, read up on recent study findings, and check out fun activities to do with the family! This newsletter has something fun for everyone. We can’t wait for you all to read it. 😀

Welcome to our two summer research fellows, Juliana Ricciuti (NSERC USRA) and Shira Klein (SWEP)! We're excited to have the two of them on board to help move many of our NSERC- and SSHRC-funded projects forward this term. Can't wait to dive into our summer projects! 🧠☀️

Congratulations to Honours thesis students Victoria Cassel & Katrina Mascherin, and directed lab students Léa Francoeur, Mackenzie Romijn, & Navid Shabani Barzegar on presenting at Queen’s Psychology & Health Sciences Research Days! And, bravo to Tessa Patton for her outstanding directed lab work!

The @dseclab.bsky.social is headed to #SRA2026 in Toronto! We're excited to share our latest work at the Society for Research on Adolescence. Our team will be presenting on Thursday, so stay tuned for some updates!

Maya Joseph (She/Her) - QU’28 in Con-Ed and Psychology. Maya is a third-year student, volunteering as an RA in the DSEC Lab. Her interests include clinical and developmental psychology. She is currently working towards a career in psychotherapy, with an interest in working with adolescents.

In this episode of Brain in Progress, listen to hosts Victoria Cassel (Honours student) and Navid Shabani Barzegar (Directed Lab student) discuss the potential ways in which social experience and brain development might be shaping adolescents’ facial expressions!

LAST CALL! We are wrapping up the DETECT-AF study in April, but still need a few more 10- to 15-year-olds to participate! 📢 We’re looking for teens, their parent, and a friend to come to our lab at Queen’s University (Kingston, ON). Contact dseclab@queensu.ca for more information!

Kate Bridge (she/her) – QU’26 Biology and Psychology. Kate is a fourth-year biology-psychology student and is volunteering as an RA in the DSEC Lab. She is particularly interested in early childhood development and its influence on communication.

The DSEC Lab is in Pittsburgh for #SAS2026! 🎉 We’re excited to present some of the latest findings from the lab and to learn from the incredible work being shared by others at the conference! Our team will be presenting on Friday and Saturday, so stay tuned for some conference highlights!

How well do first-year students know the basics of emotional development? 🤔 From the emergence of emotions early in life to understanding others’ thoughts and perspectives, watch as we invite first-year students to test their knowledge with emotional development trivia 🧠

Mackenzie Romijn (She/Her) - QU’27 in Psychology. Mackenzie is a third-year Psychology major joining the DSEC lab this year as a directed lab student! Mackenzie is particularly interested in audience design, and how subtle nuances in nonverbal cues shape social interactions.

Happy Family Day from the DSEC Lab! 🩵 Thank you to all our participating families and local organizations for your continued support. Your involvement and commitment make a meaningful difference, helping us grow our collective understanding of youth socioemotional development every day!

Teens are spending more time on social media than ever before, with platforms like TikTok playing a major role in their daily routines. This raises an important question: what draws teens to TikTok, and what stays with them after they log off? 🤔

Katrina Mascherin (She/Her) - Katrina is a fourth-year psychology student conducting her Honours thesis in the DSEC Lab. She takes a special interest in the relationship between adolescents’ ability to recognize emotions in others and how recognizable their own emotional expressions are.

What factors influence emotional communication during adolescence? Hare and colleagues examined how adolescents’ perceptions of maternal acceptance relate to changes in emotional disclosure over time, highlighting the role of parent–child relationships in emotional development.

How well do you know the science behind emotion, memory, and social experience? Level up your psychology knowledge through a series of questions exploring different topics in psychology. 🧠 Special thanks to Emma Canning for putting this quiz together!

Emma Canning (She/Her) – Emma is a first-year MSc student in Developmental Psychology at Queen’s. Her undergraduate thesis focused on increasing information elicitation in investigative interviewing. This year, she is excited to look at the neural bases of nonverbal communication in adolescents.

Thank you so much to all the participants, families, and community organizations who helped make 2025 such an amazing year in the DSEC Lab! We will be off until January 4th, 2026. We look forward to welcoming participants to the lab again in the new year! #YGKfamilies

The DSEC Lab’s winter newsletter is now available! Click the link in our bio to learn more about our ongoing studies, read up on recent study findings from the lab, and find fun activities to do with your family over the winter break. We’re so excited for you all to read it! #YGKfamilies