Development of Social & Emotional Communication - DSEC Lab

Home
Canada
Kingston, ON
Development of Social & Emotional Communication - DSEC Lab

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.

10/08/2026

Have you ever found yourself laughing just because your friend started laughing? 😆

Emotional contagion is a process by which perceiving another person’s emotional state leads the observer to experience and adopt the same emotion. 👥

Swipe through to learn more about how emotional contagion is thought to happen and how it appears in action!

For more information, check out these articles 📑:
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1993). Emotional Contagion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2(3), 96-100. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.ep10770953

Mauersberger, H., Kastendieck, T., & Hess, U. (2022). I looked at you, you looked at me, I smiled at you, you smiled at me - The impact of eye contact on emotional mimicry. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 970954. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.970954

Zhang, Q., CHEN, C., Lu, J., & Zhang, P. (2016). The mechanism of emotional contagion. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 48(11), 1423-1433.

Thank you to research assistant Catherine Shevelevich for putting together this post! Let us know if you’ve ever experienced this. 👇️

09/29/2026

Does your frontal lobe really “finish” developing at the age of 25? 🤔

Your frontal lobe doesn’t magically stop developing! Shaped by our experiences, the brain continues to change throughout adulthood. 🧠 What changes after adolescence is the rate of that development! Your brain doesn’t go from “undeveloped” to “developed.” It’s more like it moves from a period of faster changes to a period of slower, more gradual changes. ✨️ And, the experiences we have continue to shape our brain throughout our lifespan!

Check out this fantastic video made by DSEC Lab members Léa Francoeur and Shira Klein to learn more about brain development!

09/24/2026

Our very own Alessia Cataudella was named a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Storytellers Challenge finalist earlier this year!

This past June, Alessia presented some of the SSHRC-funded research she has been contributing to (led by recent PhD graduate Daniel Nault) at the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada conference in Montréal!

We are so proud to celebrate Alessia’s achievement in science communication! Check out Alessia in action as she presents her knowledge translation project.

09/15/2026

Mia Popelas (She/Her) - QU’27 in Psychology. Mia is a fourth-year psychology student volunteering as a Research Assistant in the DSEC Lab. She is interested in exploring the interplay between sensory processing, interoception, and the development of emotion regulation. She is working towards a future career in clinical psychology, focused on community-based research conducted with underrepresented populations and counselling work with adolescents and young adults.

Fun fact: Outside of her academics, Mia is a photographer who works with clients and student publications to explore and develop her creative interests.

09/03/2026

The DSEC Lab’s summer 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 check out fun activities to do with the family! We can’t wait for you all to read it 😊

08/18/2026

Shira Klein (She/Her) - QU’27 in Psychology. Shira is a volunteer research assistant and a SWEP summer research fellow in the DSEC Lab, where she is excited to be exploring the development of nonverbal communication and how it shapes our social interactions. Her academic journey has sparked a strong interest in rehabilitation sciences, and she hopes to pursue a future career as a Speech-Language Pathologist or Occupational Therapist, supporting individuals in building and regaining meaningful communication skills.

When she’s not in the lab, Shira loves to bake sweets! 🍪

08/13/2026

Do adolescents recognize emotions better in people their own age? 🧐

An own-age bias refers to the tendency to recognize faces from your own age group more easily than faces from other age groups. Since this bias has been shown in both children and adults, researchers wanted to figure out whether it also appears during adolescence.

Vetter and colleagues (2018) tested whether adolescents were better at recognizing emotions in faces of other adolescents compared to adults, and whether emotion recognition changed across different stages of puberty.

Swipe through to learn more about what they found 👀

Interested in learning more? You can find the full paper here 📑:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00956/full

Thank you to our incoming graduate student Katrina Mascherin for putting together this fantastic post!

08/04/2026

Have you seen the viral "wow, okay" trend? 🤔

It's the one where you say the same sentence in four 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're interested in how people communicate emotions and intentions through nonverbal cues like tone of voice and facial expressions.

Since our research topic has gone viral, we asked members of our lab to give the trend a try.

Thank you to research assistants Sienna Valdez and Mikayla Bellamy for giving it a go!

Follow along and let us know how you did in the comments below! 👇️

07/30/2026

We spend a lot of time talking about communication. Listening is a key component of good communication! 👂️

Active listening is about paying attention, showing you’re engaged, and helping the other person feel heard. Research has found that people who experience active listening feel more understood and more satisfied with their conversations. 😀

To learn more, check out this article by Weger and colleagues:
Weger, H., Castle Bell, G., Minei, E.M., & Robinson, M. C. (2014). The Relative Effectiveness of Active Listening in Initial Interactions. International Journal of Listening 28(1), 13-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/10904018.2013.813234.

Thank you to research assistants Olivia Murray and Reyna Okumura for putting together this fantastic post!

07/21/2026

Interested in getting involved with science? 🧠 The DSEC Lab at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario) is looking for 11- to 16-year-olds to come in with a friend 👭 and a parent 🧑‍🧒 for an in-person study called EXPRESS-2!

Curious about what you will do? One of our research assistants, Alana 😸, will guide you through what the visit will look like in this video. Teens will be asked to have one-on-one conversations 💬 with their friend and with their parent about pre-selected topics of their choice! They will also be asked to provide a hair sample and express different emotions using their face 🧒 and voice. 🗣️ The friend who comes to the visit will be asked to rate other people’s emotions on a computer. Finally, everyone will complete questionnaires about their identity, feelings and emotions, and relationships.

As a thank-you from the DSEC Lab, teens will receive $30 for your time, and friends will get $10. Please contact 📧[email protected] if you have any questions or know a teen who would be interested in participating! Or, click the link in our bio to fill out our eligibility form to get started. 😊

Address

62 Arch Street
Kingston, ON

Website

https://linktr.ee/dseclab

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Development of Social & Emotional Communication - DSEC Lab posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The School

Send a message to Development of Social & Emotional Communication - DSEC Lab:

Want your school to be the top-listed school/college in Kingston?