Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Development of Social & Emotional Communication - DSEC Lab, Educational Research Center, 62 Arch Street, Kingston, ON.
06/23/2026
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. She takes an interest in young adult clinical and social psychology, and forensic psychology. She is currently working towards pursuing higher education in clinical psychology.
Fun fact: Olivia has two cats, named Phoebe and Fozzie, and a puppy named Robin at home! 😺🐶
06/18/2026
Have you heard the saying “fake it till you make it”? 💅
People often believe that smiling might make you feel happier! 😀 This notion comes from early psychological theories of emotion. Based on these ideas, the “facial feedback hypothesis” suggests 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 whether there was evidence in support of this hypothesis. Check out what they found by swiping through these slides!
Interested in learning more? You can find the full paper here 📑:
https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000194
Thank you to research assistant Tessa Patton for putting together this fantastic post!
Does this track with your experiences? Have you noticed an effect of your facial expressions on your emotions? Let us know in the comments! 👇️
Research is a team effort, and we're lucky to have such an incredible one ✨
We're grateful to work alongside students who make the lab a collaborative, supportive, and welcoming learning environment! 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, and contextual cues. What happens when you’re left with just one? 🤔
We asked Dr. Morningstar to see how well she could recognize the team by voice! 🗣️ This game removes all other cues and focuses on voice alone, requiring us to map the acoustics of someone’s voice (like the pitch or timbre of their voice) to their identity. Trying to do this highlights how much we rely on multiple sources of information to recognize people in our everyday lives! 🎤
Try this voice identification game with your family and friends and see how many familiar voices you can recognize!
05/26/2026
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. Her interest lies in how people (especially youth!) communicate, on individual and broader social scales. She is working towards a career in research or law, or maybe both!
Fun fact: Reyna recently started learning how to sew—ask her about the shirt she made! 🪡
Congratulations to Alessia Cataudella, who has been named a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Storytellers Challenge finalist! 🎉
This recognition highlights Alessia’s outstanding ability to translate complex research into clear, engaging, and meaningful storytelling.
Alessia put her ✨️ incredible ✨️ knowledge translation skills to use in the video submission describing some of the SSHRC-funded research she has been contributing to.
We’re proud to celebrate this achievement and the dedication it reflects! Watch to learn more and let us know what questions you have about our lab’s research.
05/14/2026
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. 😀
05/06/2026
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! 🧠☀️
Special thank you to Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Queen's University Career Services, and Queen's VP Research Office for their support of undergraduate research.
04/30/2026
Congratulations to Honours thesis students Victoria Cassel and Katrina Mascherin, as well as directed lab students Léa Francoeur and Mackenzie Romijn on their outstanding presentations at the annual Queen's Psychology Research Day. 🎉
Our directed lab student Navid Shabani Barzegar also presented his work at the Health Sciences Research Poster Day. 🎉
We are also recognizing directed lab student Tessa Patton for the incredible work she put into her directed lab project!
We are incredibly proud of all our students for their hard work and dedication over the past year. It’s been great to see all that you’ve accomplished!
04/13/2026
The Development of Social & Emotional Communication - DSEC Lab is headed to in Toronto! We're excited to share our latest work at Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA). Is adolescents’ attention to friends related to how their brain responds to social information? How do adolescents interpret facial and vocal emotions when expressed by adults versus other teens? Do adolescents use different facial movements when talking to friends versus caregivers? Our team will be presenting on Thursday, so stay tuned for some updates!