Participatory Sensemaking & the Third Entity
Collaborative Kitchen Cognition
In this mixed-methods research program, we test how affect-biased attention is shaped by meaningful everyday interactive processes such as those observed during food preparation or cooking.
Table study
In everyday tasks requiring joint action between partners, do subjective experiences of agency and coordination reflect 3rd person measures of the degree and quality of coordination? When coordination is high, is this reflected in more synchronized heartbeats?
Patterns of social brain development
What patterns of brain activity make each person unique? How do these patterns change as children grow up and develop social skills? This line of research, in collaboration with Dr. Tamara Vanderwal, examines how the stability of children’s brain patterns, and the similarity of these patterns to peers, relates to social and emotional development. This research helps us understand how the brain matures alongside the major social changes that occur during childhood and adolescence, from developing friendships and becoming part of larger social circles to gaining independence from parents.