Social Cognition Lab, University of Miami

Join us to CONGRATULATE Arushi Malik on receiving the American Psychological Association's 2026 Dissertation Research Grant in Developmental Psychology!

This award will support follow-up studies extending her dissertation research, which explores whether infant well-being can serve as a predictor of later health and well-being throughout childhood.

We are excited to see this important work continue and are proud that Arushi will be recognized as an award recipient at the 2026 APA Conference.

Congratulations on this well-deserved achievement!

For more about this award visit: https://www.apadivisions.org/division-7/awards/research-grant

Are you a sibling of someone with autism and starting your own family — or have you recently welcomed a baby?

You may be eligible for ASF’s Next Gen Sibs Project, a landmark study examining autism heritability and the factors that shape autism risk.

Participating families receive expert developmental evaluations, clinical feedback, and multi-year guidance.

Learn more or refer a family: https://nextgensibs.org

Our research team—Nashmia, Danita, Georgia, & Anastassia—presented some of our lab's new findings on newborn social attention development at the RCIF conference (https://ugr.miami.edu/rcif/)! Warm thanks to Arushi, Shuo, & Tiffany for their mentorship of this amazing crew. And big thanks to all of the families who participated. We look forward to sharing the paper with you when it's accepted - stay tuned!

Now looking for infants between 12 to 16 months old for the friendship study!

New study on infant friendship (12 to 16 months)! 🤗 https://umiami.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0lg5DAvKQKVfaaq

“Sharing the same spaces and social interaction in the first year of life with peers contributes to the development of our microbiome… the unique set of bacteria that each of us carries”

Social interaction among infants boosts diversity of gut microbial strains, study shows The microbiome of infants is shaped by social relationships from an early age and not only by family sources, finds a recent study published in the journal Nature.

Welcome to our new research assistant, Danita Hullu! Danita earned her B.S. in psychology from the University of Florida & plans to pursue graduate studies in developmental psychology. She is passionate about working with children & is particularly interested in research on parent-child bonds & attachment. In her free time, she enjoys creating personalized playlists for friends and family, playing the guitar, staying connected with friends abroad, & attending workout classes.

Want to support science on infants' emotions? Parents of babies (2-24 months) can complete our short, online study: https://umiami.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e3EErawIQxZAniu