Seth Pollak

@sethpollak

Child Emotion Research Lab at Univ of Wisconsin - Madison. Science about emotions to improve children’s wellbeing.

192 Following2,098 Followers26 Posts

Is this your profile?Claim it and sethpollak.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

Seth Pollak@sethpollak· Jun 18

Why do stressful childhood experiences lead people to make maladaptive choices? This study suggests early experiences lead individuals to expect environments to be volatile, explaining why their decisions feel appropriate to them. shorturl.at/e0tZC 🧪 @kesmith.bsky.social @payampiray.bsky.social

Teenagers red high-tops standing in front of arrows pointing in many directions

Seth Pollak@sethpollak· Mar 12

How do humans learn to weight signals when reasoning about emotions? Children change both kinds of cues they rely on and the ways they use cues in their reasoning. New work from Andrea Stein using adorable stimuli, too. 🧪 dx.doi.org/10.1111/desc... #cogsci #devsci #AffectSci #PsychSciSky

A 3D cartoon alien with a round pink face looks forward. It has large green eyes, a small pink nose, bright blue lips, and short orange eyebrow shapes above its eyes. Blue ear-like shapes stick out on both sides of its head. Two thin antennae rise from the top of its head and bend outward, each ending in shiny, speckled spheres. The background is plain light gray.

Seth Pollak@sethpollak· Aug 18

Demonstrates that while preschoolers initially rely on perceptual information from faces, this diminishes with age; the crux of emotional development in children shifts to conceptual knowledge gained through social experience. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #cogsci #devsci #AffectSci #PsychSciSky

image shows four children posing as if they are thinking or considering an option with thought bubbles depicted above their heads

Seth Pollak@sethpollak· Mar 29

🧪 Call for Papers: Rigorous science that examines children's developmental trajectories in the long shadow of COVID-19, with a special focus on heterogeneity among children’s developmental contexts, social experiences, and outcomes. www.srcd.org/call-papers-...

Seth Pollak@sethpollak· Feb 14

New issue of Dædalus on caregiving. Megan Gunnar @rjc3kids.bsky.social and I discuss science parents can rely on to make decisions about care of children. www.amacad.org/sites/defaul... OPEN ACCESS bit.ly/3Qm49ha www.amacad.org/sites/defaul... 🧪 #devsci #psychology #developmentalpsychology

Seth Pollak@sethpollak· Jan 27

Childhood adversity influences future decision-making. This systematic review suggests adversity shifts individuals to prioritize information about risks and de-value information about reward- which is likely adaptive in adverse contexts. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S... @kesmith.bsky.social

Seth Pollak@sethpollak· Dec 10

Postdoctoral positions in Emotion Research. Come and collaborate with 24 training faculty across disciplines in the nation’s longest standing emotion research training program (also home to the country’s largest local farmers market). Applications are due on Friday, February 7,2025. emotion.wisc.edu

Seth Pollak@sethpollak· Nov 19

Computational approaches to language at UW-Madison! jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...

Seth Pollak@sethpollak· Mar 14

New work led by Madeline Harms examines the structure of explore-exploit decision making using four commonly used paradigms to advance understanding of how individuals adapt to changing environments over time. authors.elsevier.com/a/1ikHr2Hxod...

Seth Pollak@sethpollak· Nov 27

Early experiences influence how humans learn from and adapt to their changing circumstances www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Children who experienced their lives as less predictable explore less, and therefore have fewer opportunities to learn about environments and the people in them

Seth Pollak@sethpollak· Nov 25

Come study children's emotions and learning with us at the UW-Madison Child Emotion Lab. Post-doc fellowships on the NIMH Training Program in Emotion Research. Apps due February 2, 2024 (but please contact me before applying). childemotion.waisman.wisc.edu emotion.wisc.edu