Click here if you are interested in some of our past projects.
RoboAffect
With the rapid development of robotics, so-called social robots are likely to become a part of our daily lives. Peoples’ daily life will not only consist of interacting with other people but also with social robots. This future prospect has led to growing research in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI). In recent years, research in this field has greatly advanced our knowledge about people’s attitudes towards social robots and how their appearance and capabilities influence these attitudes. But how do we react to social robots fast and automatically, at an “instinctive level”? In the present project, we will investigate basic affective responses and feelings related to satisfaction of social needs elicited by interaction with social robots. In order to investigate these phenomena with well-controlled experiments, we will focus on a fundamental form of social interaction: making eye contact. Previous studies have indicated that human-human eye contact elicits both basic affective (psychophysiological) reactions as well as has an influence on feelings related to fulfillment of basic social needs. In the first part of the project, we will investigate, both in adult participants and in young infants, whether eye contact with a social robot will elicit similar psychophysiological responses as eye contact with another human. In the second part of the project, we will investigate whether a social robot’s gaze direction can influence human partners’ feelings related to social inclusion versus exclusion, and whether social contact with a robot can have “healing power” on negative feelings resulting from being socially excluded. The results will advance our knowledge regarding whether the interaction signals sent by social robots can trigger socio-cognitive processes and affective reactions similar to those observed during human-human interaction. The project will also contribute to the technological endeavors aimed to develop more and more nuanced and human-like nonverbal and verbal behaviors to social robots.
Funding:
Academy of Finland (2020-2024)
Researchers:
Jari Hietanen (principal investigator)
TransParent
Across the adult life course, becoming a parent may be the most transformative experience. The transition to parenthood is associated with major hormonal, neural, and psychological changes which may be important for the adaptation to the challenges of parenting. A key aspect of parent-child interaction concerns the processing and responding to the various communicative and emotional signals of the child, but currently we know very little about whether processing children’s social signals changes when we become parents. The goal of the TransParent project is to investigate changes in the behavioral, neural, physiological, and hormonal responses to infant and adult social signals during the transition to parenthood. Using a variety of methods, we are studying participants at different phases of the transition to parenthood, such as people without children, parents expecting their first baby, and parents of young infants.
Funding:
Academy of Finland (2017-2023)
Researchers:
Mikko Peltola (principal investigator), Hanneli Sinisalo (PhD student), Sonja Veistola (PhD student), Santeri Yrttiaho (postdoctoral researcher), Elisa Vuoriainen (postdoctoral researcher)
For further information, see project website
Gaze at Toddler
The early detection of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is required to facilitate early intervention. In Gaze at Toddler –project, the aim is to investigate whether the early detection of ASD could be improved by combining toddlers’ psychophysiological responses to eye contact with the parental reports of behaviour. Toddlers with increased likelihood to ASD will be screened from general population at the age of 16 to 18 months. Based on the parental screening questionnaire, toddlers with high and low likelihood for having autism spectrum disorder will be asked to participate in this longitudinal study, in which their development will be followed and responses to eye contact will be studied. The toddlers will be followed-up until the age of 36- months, when diagnostic outcome is possible to be confirmed. In addition, the parents whose toddlers show behavioural features characteristic of ASD and reduced use of eye contact, will be offered parental guidance on how to increase social engagement and spontaneous eye contact initiation with their toddler. The findings of our study will provide important knowledge for developing a standard procedure of early detection and intervention of ASD at the national level. The project is based on our previous Autism and Gaze –project.
Funding:
Academy of Finland (2018-2023)
Researchers:
Anneli Kylliäinen (principal investigator), Terhi Helminen, Fiia Takio (postdoc researchers), Jenni Lauttia (PhD student) and Elina Lehtonen (project researcher)
For further information, see project website (in Finnish)
CHILD-SLEEP
Despite the consensus on the importance of sleep in children’s development, major gaps in the current knowledge still prevail, partly because of methodological limitations in previous research on sleep development and partly because of the difficulties in extrapolating findings from adult studies to children. Children can be particularly vulnerable to the effects of inadequate sleep, because the need of sleep in the developing brain is higher than later in life. The CHILD-SLEEP project contributes to our understanding of sleep development by studying 1) the prerequisites of healthy sleep development in early childhood, 2) the long-term significance of early sleep and circadian rhythm development and their deviations on children’s development, and 3) the effectiveness of promoting healthy sleep practices in primary health care settings in a systematic preventive sleep education program. More than 1600 families have participated in longitudinal assessments since the project started in 2012. Approximately 300 hundred children have visited the HIP Lab at different time points from infancy to middle childhood for assessments of attention, emotion processing, executive functions, autonomic physiology, cognitive development, and parent-child interaction.
Funding (2012 – present):
Academy of Finland, Gyllenberg foundation, Yrjö Jahnson Foundation, Foundation for Pediatric Research, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Tampere University Hospital, Arvo and Lea Ylppö Foundation, and the Doctors’ Association in Tampere
Researchers:
CHILD-SLEEP is a large collaboration of multiple institutions in Southern and Eastern Finland, with parties from Tampere University, Tampere University Hospital, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki University Hospital, University of Helsinki, and the University of Eastern Finland. The studies that take place in the HIP lab are directed and conducted by Anneli Kylliäinen, Mikko Peltola, and Tiina Mäkelä.
For further information, see project website (in Finnish)
Empathy in early childhood
Already during the first year of life, infants are able to show signs of empathic concern towards others’ distress. Research in older children and adults, on the other hand, has shown that individual differences in empathy and prosocial behavior are associated with attention and sensitivity to social signals, such as facial expressions of emotion. In this project, we investigate whether face and emotion processing is associated with empathic concern and prosocial behavior already during the first years of life. In the HIP Lab, we have collected a longitudinal dataset of 134 children from 7 months to 4 years of age, including eye-tracking measures of face processing and observational paradigms for assessing empathic concern and prosocial behavior.
Researchers:
Mikko Peltola (principal investigator), Jukka Leppänen (University of Turku), Santeri Yrttiaho, Maayan Davidov (Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel)
For further information, see project website
Decoding emotions across the life-span
Social and emotional skills are becoming increasingly important in the modern fast-changing and diverse world. They refer to the abilities to regulate one’s thoughts, emotions and behaviour, which influence a wide range of personal outcomes throughout the life. An important part of social emotional skills is the understanding of one’s own internal experiences and emotions. This understanding can help in both regulating one’s own emotions and empathizing with others. This project aims at characterizing the behavioural and neural underpinnings of emotional experiences and their development from childhood to adulthood. We combine self-reports of emotional experiences with brain imaging using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in both children and adults to map the development of emotional experiences.
Funding:
Academy of Finland (2019-2022)
Researchers: Heini Saarimäki