The Study of Emotion and Its Relation to Children's Mental Health Emotions allow us to communicate our intentions and feelings to others, to figure out what other people are up to, and anticipate and plan our own behaviors. How do our brains take all of that complicated information and combine it with other things we know about, and expect, and have learned about people? And how can we do this so quickly? When you think about it, emotions involve extremely complicated tasks that, curiously, sophisticated computer systems cannot perform nearly as well as very young children! Interestingly, little is known about the origins and functioning of the neural architecture that allows humans to perceive, communicate, and respond to emotional information. Is this ability something that we are born with or do we learn about emotions very quickly during early childhood? Members of our research group are asking the following questions: Where do emotions come from? What parts of the brain to we use to understand emotions? What general or specific cognitive processes are involved in recognizing emotions? And most importantly, how might the development of these processes put some children at risk for the development of psychological problems later in life? A Developmental Approach to Psychopathology We are interested in developmental aspects of psychopathology. Rather than an "Is it nature, or is it nuture" approach, we are exploring by what mechanisms may experiences give rise to psychopathology. To address this question, we seek to characterize the functional specializations of potentially different neural systems involved in emotional processes, taking a developmental approach to the study of emotion and psychopathology. Central to our research endeavor is the principle that a deeper understanding of normal emotional development will help us to clarify and understand those factors that put children at risk for the development of emotional disorders. Conversely, through the study of psychopathology, or problems in emotional functioning, we hope to better understand the emergence of normal emotional processes that may not be readily apparent in most individuals. Thus normality helps us to understand abnormality and vice versa. Current studies in our laboratory involve examining the developmental organization of emotional processes in typically developing children, children with developmental disabilities, children at risk for depression, post-institutionalized children, and children who have experienced maltreatment/abuse. Our aim is to construct testable models of how biological endowment and social experience interact in the development of emotions and risk for psychopathology.
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