Psychological Sciences

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Social Development Laboratory

Children's peer relationships are an important context for social, emotional, and cognitive development. In the lab, our research addresses individual differences in children's peer relationships and the connection of peer relations to adjustment in school contexts.  Another major focus of the research is on the contributions of emotion processes to children's reasoning about problematic situations with peers, including social information processing and socio-moral judgments. In recent studies we have examined:

• the influence of gender and age relative to classmates on peer relations in ungraded primary
• the contributions of friendship and overall acceptance by classmates to adjustment and success in ungraded primary
• the correlates of individual differences in popularity and friendship
• the study of anger, conflict and aggression which contribute to peer rejection
• contextual effects (mood, emotion cues, frame of reference, situation types) on children's thinking about problematic situations with peers.

For more information on this lab contact Dr. Elizabeth A. Lemerise