I am a current graduate student at McMaster University in Psychology, Neuroscience, & Behavior. I work in the Human Development Center with Dr. Mel Rutherford. My research interests are broadly in the areas of social cognition, comparative development, and evolutionary developmental psychology.
My research focuses on the perception of emotional facial expressions, particularly on how individuals perceive expressions in broad categories. I have investigated individual differences of categorical perception and found that that not every person perceives emotional facial expressions in categorical manner, but overall are consistent in their responses to face images. I have investigated a sometimes ambiguous emotion, surprise, and found that although surprise is considered to be a “basic” emotion the perception of surprised faces changes based on the context situation given about the face. I have tested preschool aged children (3- and 3.5-year-olds) and determined that they view expressions in much the same way that adults do, in broad categories. I have also developed a new methodology for studying visual categorization that relies on eye direction rather than verbal response and could be used to compare performance across diverse groups.