At the Child and Babylab (Barn och Babylab) at Uppsala University, Joshua Juvrud uses novel and state-of-the-art techniques in research (eye-tracking, pupil dilation, EEG, motion capture) to assess how children perceive and interpret people, emotions, and actions. In developmental psychology, this is key to understanding how children learn about their world. As a semester research assistant at the Child and Babylab, you will take part in studies with adults as a complement to the work with children, exploring the learning behavior of adults using unique experimental designs and from a developmental perspective. This includes:
Adult studies. Learning and problem solving involve complex processes that change over development. Through experience, we begin to develop strategies for learning and problem solving. Through various studies, we are examining how children, adolescents, and adults learn causal properties, associations, and form strategies for transformative solutions. Using a digital platform developed in the lab, we have the ability to create custom digital experiments as ‘games’ that individuals of all ages play. By incorporating research questions into the design of these custom games we can answer important questions about how we learn goals, associations, causality, and other principles that are important for cognitive and social development and how this looks in fully developed adults.
In this course you will participate in the entire research process, from helping with study conception, to writing up your findings. You will be responsible for data collection, analyses, and writing with adult participants. Much of this work can be completed independently and outside the lab, and data collection will be completed online or at various in-person locations. By the end of the course you will have knowledge and experience in each step of the scientific process, as well as academic writing in the form of a complete manuscript.
Select Mentor Publications
- Juvrud, J., Haas, S. A., Lindskog, M., Astor, K., Namgyel, S. C., Wangmo, T., Wangchuk, Dorjee, S., Tshering, K. P., & Gredebäck, G. (2022). High quality social environment buffers infants’ cognitive development from poor maternal mental health: Evidence from a study in Bhutan. Developmental Science, 25(3), e13203.
- Juvrud, J., Haas, S. A., Fox, N. A., & Gredebäck, G. (2021). Infants’ Selective Visual Attention Is Dependent on Maternal Affect and Emotional Context. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 700272.
