We study how children, adolescents, and young adults perceive and interpret social signals, particularly those communicated by the face, and how emerging functional and structural specificity of the developing brain supports this process.

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A primary goal of our research is to understand how these face-processing abilities and the underlying neural circuitry change during development. This work has relevance for understanding the development of social information processing in general, but also how this critical process is disrupted in many disorders that effect social interactions and relationships with other people.

 

A second goal of our research is to characterize the nature of these disruptions, particularly in autism, and to design interventions to improve social functioning for these individuals. In pursuit of these goals, we study face-processing abilities in typically developing children, adolescents, and adults and those with autism using converging methodologies.