Prof. Carolien Rieffe | Leiden University | University of Twente | University College London
Dr. Li Yi works in Developmental and Pedagogical Psychology at Peking University, China. She is an expert on face processing, social cognition and cognitive abnormalities in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Currently, we are collaborating with her and her team on a KNAW-funded project on emotion understanding in ASD children in the Netherlands and China.
On 19 December 2022, our PhD student Maedeh Nasri (MSc in Computer Science) won the Wild Card Award for Interdisciplinary Research by the Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, for her paper on a data-driven approach towards better social inclusion for all children on playgrounds.
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How can schools be organized to encourage social inclusion and promote respect for diversity and individual differences? On November 16th this was discussed by members of several stakeholder organizations during an expert meeting on “Effect of policy on schoolyard culture and social inclusion” (Effect van beleid op schoolplein-cultuur en sociale inclusie) in the beautiful Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam.
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On the 8-10th the 11th International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications (CNA) took place in Palermo, Italy, and Maedeh presented her research on the spatio-temporal social network of children in the schoolyard. This network provides important information about how the physical and social environment impacts a child's behavior. For example - how do children utilize the schoolyard for face-to-face interactions? Do children interact anywhere or do they prefer to stay in a fixed spot to socialize? Preliminary results will be published soon, in the abstract book of the conference.
“I realized that ‘wellbeing’ is something more complicated – and thus also interesting – than I thought.” On July 7-15th 2022, our resident postdoc Yung-Ting Tsou participated in the International Summer School in Affective Sciences (ISSAS).
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On October 1st, Carolien will be speaking about our lab's most recent developments and updates at the 2022 International Conference on Child Development and Family Studies (CDFS). The keynote will be ONLINE and is entitled "Social inclusion at playgrounds – how to include children with communication difficulties". There is no registration fee!
On the 9th of September, Carolien will present at the Kennisdag 2021 of Eetexpert, a knowledge centre for eating and weight problems in Leuven. The event will be themed around identity development and growth, and what can be done to support that growth - emotions play an important role of course!
On June 30th 2022 Carolien gave a lecture at the Euregionaal Congresburo (ECB) online conference on over-questioning, stress and burn-out in children and adolescents.
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Every year, April 2nd is World Autism Day. And in that week - and really, the whole month - it's time to celebrate Autism Acceptance!
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Fotis joined the Focus on Emotions lab for one year as a Master student, Intern and Research Assistant, while completing his degree in Developmental Psychology at Leiden University.
Last Friday, 18 February, the weekly Focus on Emotions lab meeting was a bit bigger than usual, joined by researchers in Developmental Psychology from the University of Padova, in Italy!
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Our team is located at the department of Developmental Psychology of Leiden University and at the Human Media Interaction at the technical University of Twente, both in the Netherlands. We work in close collaboration with the ENT department of the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), the mental health organisations INTER-PSY (Groningen) and Curium-LUMC, the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), and TU Delft. Our group is dedicated to examining the development of emotional intelligence of children and adolescents from a very young age; with a strong focus on its impact on children's social development. Besides typically developing children and adolescents, we are interested in the development of those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH), with autism, or with a Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Currently, we have an ongoing project on social inclusion at schools that utilises sensor technology with DHH and autistic children. Since 2017, our team has also been working in close collaboration with a centre for DHH children in China.
On this site we will post regular news items about new publications, events, and other important news. You can also read more about our ongoing projects, read about/download questionnaires we have developed, peruse the list of our publications per topic, or learn about opportunities for students to join our team.