Michele Morningstar

Michele Morningstar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Queen's University, Faculty of Arts and Science. She serves as Director of the Development of Social and Emotional Communication (DSEC) Lab and holds cross-appointments in the Centre for Neuroscience Studies. Her research examines the biological, cognitive, and social mechanisms underlying emotional communication development from childhood through adolescence.

Education:

• Post-doctoral fellowship in Pediatrics & Neuroscience, Nationwide Children's Hospital & Ohio State University (2020)
• PhD in Clinical Psychology, McGill University (2017)
• BA in Psychology, McGill University (2011)

Research focuses on neurodevelopment of emotional communication using multimodal methods including functional neuroimaging and vocal analysis. Key interests include: how nonverbal cues (tone of voice, facial expressions) facilitate emotional understanding; neural correlates of social cognition maturation; and relationships between emotional skills, social functioning, and psychological well-being across development. Current projects investigate adolescent neural responses to peer emotions and vocal emotion recognition in clinical populations.

Publications show consistent focus on developmental social neuroscience, with recent trends examining: (1) Neural mechanisms of vocal emotion processing in typical and atypical development (2) Social-cognitive changes during adolescence (3) Clinical applications in epilepsy and psychopathology. Work emphasizes multimodal approaches integrating neural, behavioral, and acoustic data.

Teaching includes PSYC251: Developmental Psychology. Actively mentors graduate students through the DSEC Lab which employs diverse methodologies to study emotional communication development. Lab research has been funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research and other national/international agencies.