Emotional Development

Overview

Program

Call for Submissions

Research on emotional development spans infancy through adulthood and draws from diverse theoretical, methodological, and cultural traditions. The goal of this preconference is to bring together researchers investigating how emotional experience, expression, and understanding emerge and change across developmental contexts.

The full program will be posted in May. Currently, we have four confirmed invited speakers whose work spans early childhood through adulthood (see below). Nicole Nelson and Ella Moeck (University of Adelaide) examine how children, adolescents, and adults perceive, interpret, and regulate emotions in dynamic, real-world contexts. Alexandra Main and Eric Walle (University of California, Merced) investigate the social foundations of emotional development, including parent–child communication, empathy, and infants’ use of emotional cues to guide behavior. Together, these speakers provide a broad developmental framework that integrates cognitive, social, and interpersonal approaches.

We also invite short talks and poster presentations from researchers at all career stages. Submissions should include the following information:

1. Specify for a short talk, poster, or either.

2. Title

3. Names, affiliations and contact information for all authors

4. A 300-word abstract describing the research. You may also include 2 tables or figures in your submission.

Submit your abstract by emailing either Lukas Lopez (lukas.lopez@fcs.utah.edu) or Peter Reschke (peter_reschke@byu.edu) if you are interested in presenting. Emails should use the subject line “EmoDevPrecon Abstract – [1st author last name]”. Attach all submission materials as a single .pdf file. Short talk and poster submissions are due May 1st. We will also solicit late-breaking research posters with abstracts due June 1st.

Invited Speakers

Alexandra Main (University of California, Merced)

Tentative talk title: Emotion dynamics in parent-adolescent interactions: Cultural and contextual considerations

Alexandra Main, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of California, Merced. She earned her PhD in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Main is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on parent-child relationships, adolescent socioemotional development, and the ways in which culture and family processes shape youths’ adjustment. Her work examines emotional dynamics within families, including emotion socialization, autonomy-related interactions, and how cultural variables influence parent-adolescent relationships. Using observational methods, survey measures, and daily-report designs, Dr. Main investigates how parents and adolescents influence each other in real time and how these interactions contribute to mental and physical health.

Ella Moeck (University of Adelaide)

Tentative talk title: The prevalence and impact of negative online content exposure among Australian adolescents

Ella Moeck (she/her) is a Lecturer at Adelaide University and director of the Emotion, Memory, and Uncertainty lab (EMU lab). Her research centres around understanding how everyday stressors shape people's emotions, and ability to regulate their emotions. Such stressors include waiting for uncertain outcomes and encountering negative content online. Ella combines experimental and experience sampling methods, where people complete multiple smartphone surveys each day.

Nicole Nelson (University of Adelaide)

Tentative talk title: TBA

Dr Nicole Nelson examines how children and adults learn about and understand emotional expressions and other non-verbal information. Her research examines how we integrate facial, postural, and vocal expression cues, how children attend to and learn about new emotions and non-verbal information, and what our emotional expressions look like during daily interactions. Dr Nelson received her PhD from Boston College, was an NSF-funded Postdoctoral Fellow at Brock University in Canada, and after several years at the University of Queensland, in 2021 she joined the School of Psychology at the University of Adelaide.

Eric Walle (University of California, Merced)

Tentative talk title: TBA

Dr. Eric Walle is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of California, Merced. He is the Director of the Interpersonal Development Lab, where he conducts research examining emotion, socio-emotional development, and developmental transitions. Walle is particularly interested in the functions of emotions in interpersonal contexts, such as emotion responding, emotion regulation, and empathy. He conducts empirical research with infants, children, and adults, examining topics including behavioral responding to others’ discrete emotions, perceiving others’ emotions, and the role of social cognition in the development of emotion understanding. He also conducts research examining how developmental transitions (e.g., the onset of walking) impact infant language, cognition, emotion, and social interactions. Walle is Co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Emotional Development (2022) and serves as an Associate Editor for the journals Infancy, Emotion Review, and Affective Science.