Why do stressful childhood experiences lead people to make maladaptive choices? This study suggests early experiences lead individuals to expect environments to be volatile, explaining why their decisions feel appropriate to them. shorturl.at/e0tZC 🧪 @kesmith.bsky.social @payampiray.bsky.social

Check it out! Really enjoyed writing this and thinking through how our ideas about how to address this challenge have evolved in the last five years.

Seth Pollak@sethpollak.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Behold! Decades of evidence show adversity affects development, the challenge to advance knowledge is figuring out why and how experience matters. Our latest thinking: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... 🧪 @kesmith.bsky.social #devsci #ClinicalPsychology #ClinicalPsychology #PsychScience

The SPAN lab is looking for children ages 4 - 7 years old to participate in our new study on emotional development! The study is all online and you can earn up to $60 in gift cards. You can find more information and sign up here: childrenhelpingscience.com/studies/795a... Please share!

What is loneliness and what can we do about it?? @affectscience.bsky.social Anita Restrepo showed that undergrads who were lonelier worked harder for others than less lonelier undergrads (but still worked harder regardless of loneliness when working for themselves) regardless of gain/loss framing

Check out our symposium on translational approaches to loneliness and emotion tomorrow at 9:45am! @affectscience.bsky.social @mattsouthward.bsky.social

In other summer news, I saw Glass Animals last night and spent much of the concert trying to imagine what Patrick's experience would have been when he took his daughter 😅 @quantitude.bsky.social

Exciting summer news in the SPAN Lab! Gaby Rivera Martinez, a rising senior in the lab, received a RUN Dean's List Summer Undergraduate Fellowship to support her thesis work on how loneliness and socioeconomic status influence emotion perception in young children. Congrats Gaby!! 🥳

The SPAN lab is looking for children ages 4 - 7 years old to participate in our new study on emotional development! The study is all online and you can earn up to $60 in gift cards. You can find more information and sign up here: childrenhelpingscience.com/studies/795a... Please share!

Learning in context: Socioemotional stimuli enhance cognitive learning processes but not psychophysiological engagement in early adolescence osf.io/preprints/ps...

Learning about psychophysiology in the SPAN lab!

Childhood adversity influences future decision-making. This systematic review suggests adversity shifts individuals to prioritize information about risks and de-value information about reward- which is likely adaptive in adverse contexts. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S... @kesmith.bsky.social

“Arousal might refer to some set of processes underlying emotion but evidence for its role in emotional experiences and behavior is at best mixed and imprecise” from @kesmith.bsky.social & @sethpollak.bsky.social (Reading as I prep an arousal coding template 💃)

Seth Pollak@sethpollak.bsky.social · 2y ago

A cheeky new paper that may challenge assumptions about emotion (hopefully, in a productive way). “Arousal Might Not Be Anything to Get Excited About” journals.sagepub.com/share/W6VFCD... asks: Is there really evidence for arousal, or is it just a placeholder for unexplained aspects of emotion?

Posting here as well as on the other app. Finally getting around to sharing our (@sethpollak.bsky.social) new theoretical paper! We challenge assumptions around the role of arousal in emotion, highlighting ambiguity in how the construct is defined and measured. journals.sagepub.com/eprint/XWGB4...

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In case there is anyone here who is not on Twitter: I will be recruiting a PhD student this cycle! Apply if interested in questions related to how stress shapes development. Particularly a good fit if interested in loneliness, emotion, learning, decision making, and psychophysiology.

Interested in researching emotion regulation, loneliness, well-being, and rural health using EEG and peripheral psychophysiology methods? You are in luck! I am recruiting a graduate student to start Fall 2025! See my faculty webpage for more details www.ndsu.edu/faculty/ajfi...