Current Studies

Detecting emotion changes while interacting with a digital child - ELLA

Soul Machines has developed a lifelike interactive model of a human infant. The Early Learning Lab uses this digital child to explore how fast and accurate caregivers respond to emotion changes, with the goal of improving caregiver responsiveness through targeted interventions.

We are seeking parents of children aged 3 to 5 years to participate in this exciting research. Sign up now to be a part of this exciting study, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund.

Key Contact: Florian

Play puzzles with your child, a friend's child, and a digital child!

Join us for our exciting new study on parent-child interactions. We are examining the ways in which parents’ interactions with their own child are similar to, or different from, interactions with other children. This study is the first of its kind in our centre as it is the first time that we are asking parents to bring a friend with the same-aged child to our centre, so you can play puzzles with your child, a friend’s child, and a digital child!

We are seeking parents and their 1.5 – 2.5 year old children to participate in this exciting research with a friend. Sign up now to be a part of this exciting study, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund.

Key Contact: Florian/Alesha

Babies and Auditory Discrimination - Music Lab

This study seeks to understand what sounds babies can distinguish between. We know how quickly infants acquire language, but what is it that they are hearing and paying attention to in their auditory environment that facilitates this?

We have designed a listening study where babies will watch and react to cartoon characters making sounds to gain a better understanding of their fine grained auditory abilities.

We are looking for families with infants between 3 and 7 months of age. Please sign up today or spread the word to families you know who may be interested in helping us with this research!

Key Contact: Juliet

Does sleep play a role in toddlers’ social behaviour - ELLA

This new study explores the potentially important link between sleep and social interactions in older infants. This study involves two visits to our child-friendly research space. Children will participate in games with both yourself and an experimenter to help understand sleep and social interactions.

We are looking for families with children between 24 and 30 months of age to participate in this fun new study. Please sign up today or spread the word to families you know who may be interested in helping us with this research!

Key Contact: Immy

School of Psychology
Building 302, 2nd Floor
23 Symonds Street
The University of Auckland
Auckland, 1142
Aotearoa / New Zealand

Phone:
+64 9 9234236
Email:
developmentalscience@auckland.ac.nz