Department of Psychology

You may be wondering how your participation contributes to a greater understanding of child development. Like all research, our studies begin with questions:

• How do children respond to the social and emotional events surrounding them?

• Are their individual differences in this response?

• Are there individual differences in the way children work to regulate their responses?

• Are there biological differences in how children deal with emotional and social situations?

• By studying normally developing children, can we learn to identify and help children having difficulty adapting to their social world?

The ultimate goal of our research at the CAT Lab is to contribute to the scientific knowledge about child development. We also want to use this knowledge to help children showing difficulty. Your child’s participation (as part of the group pattern) will find its way into lecture and posters presented at professional societies and ultimately to articles reporting the research in scientific journals. Eventually, our work may also be incorporated into the clinic as part of identification and intervention.

Another important part of the lab is to educate students about how to do research. Your child may participate in a study that is part of a graduate student’s dissertation or an undergraduate student’s project. Learning how to conduct good developmental research is impossible without observing and interacting with real children doing real (sometimes surprising) things. Many of our students also go on to work in schools and clinics in our area.