Congratulations to Riley Bonar for his successful Master’s thesis defence yesterday! Thank you to the evaluation committee for the engaging discussion and insightful questions. Riley, you have so much to be proud of—can’t wait for the next steps of your academic journey!

Happy trails to the dseclab.bsky.social 2025 summer staff! Victoria Cassel (queensuresearch.bsky.social USSRF), Polly Clayton (Matariki Network of Universities), Maria Fernanda Trigo Adami (MITACS), Olivia Merulla (staff), and Kyla Campbell (coordinator) moved our lab's work forward in major ways.

Major thanks to the @DSEC Lab Summer 2025 team for their hard-work & dedication! L to R, top: Tessa Patton, Navid Shabani Barzegar, Maria Fernanda Trigo Adami, Daniel Nault, Olivia Merulla, Catherine Shevelevich, Riley Bonar. Bottom: Victoria Cassel, Kyla Campbell, me, Rushmeet Singh, Polly Clayton.

Queen's University has a special recruitment initiative for Ph.D. students whose admission was rescinded/who are reconsidering their acceptances to U.S. schools. If you are in this position and are interested in understanding how adolescents learn to navigate their social world, reach out to me! 🍁

I always enjoy the @psychscience.bsky.social conference, and this year’s #APS25DC was no exception! It was great to reconnect & share ideas with colleagues from around the world. Hope to do it again in Barcelona next year! @chronakigeorgia.bsky.social @kat-roto.bsky.social @danielnault.bsky.social

Today's the day: #APS25DC kicks off in Washington, DC! @danielnault.bsky.social and I are representing the @dseclab.bsky.social and presenting new findings from our recent studies. Come say hi - we'd love to chat!

Let's hear it for the Development of Social and Emotional Communication Lab W2025 team! 🙏 This group of talented researchers was instrumental to the lab's biggest accomplishments this year. Big kudos to this superb group! 💫

The @srcdorg.bsky.social #SRCD2025 conference was a blast! Riley Bonar & @danielnault.bsky.social gave superb talks about their research, & Daniel chaired an excellent symposium. It was great to hear about exciting new work in the field, and to connect with so many colleagues & friends. 🙏

The @dseclab.bsky.social is at the @srcdorg.bsky.social #SRCD25 conference! @danielnault.bsky.social and Riley Bonar are both presenting results from their recent studies. Details below!

New paper alert: now published in Developmental Psychobiology! Using @theabcdstudy.bsky.social data, we found that pubertal maturation was associated with concurrent & longitudinal change in activation in 'social brain' regions - but not regions typically involved in basic face processing.

I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to the Alma Mater Society of @queensuglobal.bsky.social for awarding me the Frank Knox Award for Teaching Excellence for 2024-2025. Getting to share my passion for my field with students through teaching is a privilege that I cherish deeply.

And last but not least, directed lab student Natalie Yang presented a poster on teens' ratings of the intensity of their parents' and friends' emotional expressions.

Keren Katz's Honours thesis focused on identifying whether adolescents posed emotional expressions that were as recognizable as those of adults.

Major congratulations to our @dseclab.bsky.social students for their fantastic poster presentations at the Psychology Research Day this week! 🙌 Zoe Halpern presented results from her Honours thesis on adolescents' conversation styles with parents versus friends. [...]

A few weeks ago, I had the immense pleasure of attending the 2025 @affectscience.bsky.social conference in beautiful Portland, OR. SAS has quickly become one of my favourite conferences: the science, the people, and the vibes are top-notch. ✨ Looking forward to future meetings! #SAS2025

I'm excited to be sharing results from the @dseclab.bsky.social’s work on the neural correlates of emotion recognition in youth at the Centre for Neuroscience Studies’ #SeminarSeries tomorrow (12pm; Abramsky 002 or online)! 🎉

(Thank you to Tasha Jawa for creating this promo image!)