Early Empathy Development, Infant Action Perception

I have done all my university degrees at 'Babes-Bolyai University' in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. After postdoctoral training, in November 2012, I joined the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University as a lecturer.

My research focusses on two main topics in socio-emotional development. First, I am investigating how empathy develops during the first years of life. Being able to empathise with others’ affective experiences is perhaps one of the most complex social abilities. It involves a variety of processes from emotion perception to affect sharing, regulation, perspective taking, and self-other differentiation. The ultimate goal is to provide a comprehensive model of how the development of these processes contributes to the emergence of empathy, and to inform strategies for early detection, prevention and intervention of atypical social development. Currently, my work is directed towards learning about the underlying mechanisms of affect sharing in infancy, how these responses are related to empathy, and whether they motivate prosocial behaviors. Related to this, I am also researching how infants and young children across cultures develop a coherent emotional percept including information from multiple senses. In addition, I study how infants develop an understanding of others' actions, with a more specific interest in the role of the auditory information. To answer these questions, I use various methods, including behavioural, eye-tracking, and psychophysiology.

Social and Emotional Development Lab webpage