Completed projects

This project investigates how laughing together affects social behaviour such as cooperation in the context of bio-behavioural synchrony. Our hypothesis is that laughing together synchronizes brain activity, heart rhythm and behaviour between interaction partners. We measure the mechanism of interpersonal synchrony through ECG, behavioural observation and functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). To measure the brain activity of two people at the same time, we use fNIRS hyperscanning. In this project, children first laugh together and then perform cooperative tasks in games.

This research is funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions - Grant of the European Commission  – project number 101023989.

Neural oscillations play a key role in the integration of information and learning processes in adults. Our goal in this project is to investigate the neural oscillations that underlie learning about objects in infants in their first year of life. We combine EEG (electroencepahlography) measurements in early infancy with innovative stimulation and analysis methods from neuroscientific research with adults to study the neural dynamics in early brain development. This allows a deeper understanding of how infants form basic representations and the neural mechanisms underlying early learning processes.

The project is supported by the FWF (project number I 4332) as part of the DACH programme with the DFG (KO 6028/1-1).

Infant-directed singing (IDS) has traditionally been divided into playsongs and lullabies, which are argued to arouse and soothe, respectively. Despite extensive research examining the effects of IDS, we have very limited knowledge about the mechanisms of early musical exchanges between infants and their caregivers. In this project, we investigate the neural, behavioral, and physiological effects of naturalistic IDS on 7-month-old infants via electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiography (ECG) measurements. Our findings will further our understanding of the mechanisms and functions of IDS.

This project is supported by the Austrian Sciene Fund (FWF) – project number W1262-B29.

Bodily signals, such as heartbeat and respiration, are important for the perception of the emotion of other people by providing an information source that is used to distinguish between self and other. However, there are few findings on the development of the perception of bodily signals in infancy and how such a perception is connected and interacts with the development of the understanding of other people’s emotions. In this longitudinal project we investigated the development of bodily signals over the course of the first 18 months of life and their importance for the early understanding of other people’s emotions.

This project was supported by the Austrian Sciene Fund (FWF) – project number 33486-B.

In this project, we investigated the emerging sense of self in infancy by focusing on the role of embodied interactions, e.g., through the sensing of internal bodily signals such as the heartbeat, to understand how a sense of self is constructed. 

This research was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – project number KA 4926/1-1.

Our cross-cultural study in collaboration with Kyoto University investigated how early mother-infant interaction shapes culture specific visual perception processes. Images were shown to Japanese and Austrian mother-infant dyads while the infant's brain activity was recorded with electroencephalography. Our findings help to understand the developmental origins of cross-cultural differences in perception and cognition, already emerging at such an early age. 

This project was partially funded by the Mobility Fellowship of Vienna University in a research partnership with Kyoto University in Japan.

Parents play an important role regarding their children’s understanding and skills towards financial matters. This international study was initiated by Mihaela Friedlmeier. The major purpose of the study is to examine predictors for freshmen college students’ financial knowledge and behavior, and how these in turn affect financial well-being and overall life satisfaction.

This research cooperation (a Science and Technology cooperation between Austria – Slovenia, 2016-2017) deals with aspects of individuation in relation to parents (gaining autonomy while maintaining relatedness to parents) and includes criteria of becoming adult and aspects of emerging adults’ personality.