Current Research
Social Play in Typically Developing Young Children
This project investigates the differences in social interaction in typically developing young children. Given that social and emotional processing is difficult to test in developing children, we developed a unique behavioral paradigm to determine what drives different social behaviors in young children. Children visit our SEND Lab and play in a custom-built, child-friendly castle, while social and emotional behaviors are observed and quantified. We are then able to discriminate whether different responses to social stimuli are driven by reward, aversion, or simply a lack of motivation. After playing in the castle, the children also watch a short video while we track their eye movements. With this information, we can look to see if their eye movements relate to the behaviors we observed in the castle. We hope this research will lead to better diagnostic and treatment options for children in the future, such as individualized intervention strategies that seek to improve social interactions in children. Participate now!
October 23, 2021: Alexandra Carbayo presented her poster on the Devlopmental Trajectory of Dyadic Interactions at the 2021 CHM Scholarly Symposium. 
February 25, 2020: Our first year medical student, Alexandra Carbayo, presented her Early Clinical Experience Scholarly Project, "Utilization of Social Stories to Alleviate Anxiety for Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder," to the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine community. Nice work Alex!
July 17, 2019: Drs. Sarah Hulbert and Kaitlin Carlson at the 4th Annual MSU Autism Family-Professional Conference at the Henry Center for Executive Development in East Lansing.
March 27, 2019: Drs. Sarah Hulbert and Kaitlin Carlson presented the poster, "Probing Social Motivation in Young Children with and without Autism," at the 18th Annual Pediatric Research Day, hosted at the MSU Breslin Center in East Lansing.
Trainees, staff, and faculty from MSU, Helen DeVos Children's Hospital, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Sparrow Hospital, Spectrum Health, the University of Michigan, the Van Andel Research Institute, Wayne State University/Children's Hospital of Michigan, and Western University came together for a Genomic Engineering-themed research day full of keynote speakers, oral presentations, and posters.
Adaptation of eye-tracking tasks in low resource settings
We have two ongoing eye-tracking projects in Africa. One is based in Kampala, Uganda, and the other in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For both projects, we are testing the feasibility and adaption of eye-tracking tasks to establish clinical markers of emotional risk and resilience in young children and adolescents at risk for adverse mental health outcomes.
