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The Biopsychosocial Self-Regulation of Early Emotion & Cognition Lab (BSEC)

The University of Texas at Austin

In the Biopsychosocial Self-Regulation of Early Emotion and Cognition (BSEC) Lab, we focus on better understanding how children develop the ability to manage their emotional arousal, control their behavioral impulses, maintain and shift their attention, and adaptively engage in social contexts; a set of skills that are broadly referred to as “self-regulation.” We are particularly interested in how parents and teachers support the development of children’s independent self-regulatory skills through the coordination of their emotions, behaviors, and physiology during social interaction, and how caregiver-child interaction patterns are related to children’s adaptive functioning across environmental contexts. Further, we examine how early adverse experiences and rearing alter the development of the biological and behavioral systems underlying emotional adjustment and cognitive control, in an effort to better mitigate the negative impact of adverse early care on adaptation.