Karen Smith
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kesmith.bsky.social
Karen Smith
@kesmith.bsky.social
Assistant Professor of Psychology
@Rutgers_Newark
and SPAN lab PI. Studying variability in responses to stress across development.
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The SPAN lab is looking for children ages 4 - 7 years old to participate in our new study on emotional development! The study is all online and you can earn up to $60 in gift cards. You can find more information and sign up here: childrenhelpingscience.com/studies/795a...

Please share!
In other summer news, I saw Glass Animals last night and spent much of the concert trying to imagine what Patrick's experience would have been when he took his daughter 😅 @quantitude.bsky.social
June 11, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Exciting summer news in the SPAN Lab! Gaby Rivera Martinez, a rising senior in the lab, received a RUN Dean's List Summer Undergraduate Fellowship to support her thesis work on how loneliness and socioeconomic status influence emotion perception in young children. Congrats Gaby!! 🥳
June 11, 2025 at 3:56 PM
The SPAN lab is looking for children ages 4 - 7 years old to participate in our new study on emotional development! The study is all online and you can earn up to $60 in gift cards. You can find more information and sign up here: childrenhelpingscience.com/studies/795a...

Please share!
April 9, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Reposted by Karen Smith
Learning in context: Socioemotional stimuli enhance cognitive learning processes but not psychophysiological engagement in early adolescence
osf.io/preprints/ps...
March 19, 2025 at 8:11 PM
Learning about psychophysiology in the SPAN lab!
February 25, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Karen Smith
Childhood adversity influences future decision-making. This systematic review suggests adversity shifts individuals to prioritize information about risks and de-value information about reward- which is likely adaptive in adverse contexts.

authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

@kesmith.bsky.social
January 27, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Reposted by Karen Smith
“Arousal might refer to some set of processes underlying emotion but evidence for its role in emotional experiences and behavior is at best mixed and imprecise” from @kesmith.bsky.social & @sethpollak.bsky.social

(Reading as I prep an arousal coding template 💃)
A cheeky new paper that may challenge assumptions about emotion (hopefully, in a productive way).

“Arousal Might Not Be Anything to Get Excited About”
journals.sagepub.com/share/W6VFCD... asks: Is there really evidence for arousal, or is it just a placeholder for unexplained aspects of emotion?
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journals.sagepub.com
December 15, 2024 at 3:48 PM
Posting here as well as on the other app.

Finally getting around to sharing our (@sethpollak.bsky.social) new theoretical paper! We challenge assumptions around the role of arousal in emotion, highlighting ambiguity in how the construct is defined and measured.

journals.sagepub.com/eprint/XWGB4...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
December 16, 2024 at 2:56 PM
In case there is anyone here who is not on Twitter:

I will be recruiting a PhD student this cycle! Apply if interested in questions related to how stress shapes development. Particularly a good fit if interested in loneliness, emotion, learning, decision making, and psychophysiology.
September 17, 2024 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by Karen Smith
Interested in researching emotion regulation, loneliness, well-being, and rural health using EEG and peripheral psychophysiology methods? You are in luck! I am recruiting a graduate student to start Fall 2025! See my faculty webpage for more details www.ndsu.edu/faculty/ajfi...
September 10, 2024 at 4:04 PM