Dr. Margaret Moulson
Biography
Dr. Moulson is a Professor of Psychology and Director of the Brain and Early Experiences (BEE) Lab. She received her PhD in developmental psychology from the Institute for Child Development at the University of Minnesota and completed postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The overarching goal of Dr. Moulson鈥檚 research program is to understand the mechanisms that underlie the development of social perception in both typical and atypical populations. Her research combines behavioural (head-mounted video recording, eye-tracking, looking time paradigms) and brain-based (EEG) measures to investigate face and emotion perception throughout development, with a particular focus on infancy and the role that early visual experience plays in driving developmental change. Research in the BEE Lab is supported by NSERC and SSHRC.
Some current research questions in the lab include:
- How does variability impact infants鈥�, children鈥檚, and adults鈥� ability to recognize new faces?
- How does one鈥檚 lifetime history of exposure to faces impact adult face processing abilities?
- When and how do infants learn to recognize facial expressions of emotion?
- How is emotion perception in the first year of life related to higher-level abilities, like emotion regulation, in the second year?
Selected Publications
Latif, M., Sugden, N., O鈥橦agan, M., & Moulson, M. C. (2025). Toronto Ethnically Diverse (TED) Face Database: A multi-faceted stimulus set. Frontiers in Psychology, 16.
Segal, S., & Moulson, M. C. (2024). The effectiveness of maternal regulatory attempts in the development of infant emotion regulation. Infancy, 29, 672-692.
Zhou, X., Mondloch, C. J., Chien, S. H., & Moulson, M. C. (2022). Multi-cultural cities reduce disadvantages in recognizing naturalistic images of other-race faces: evidence from a novel face learning task. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 8950.
Zhou, X., Vyas, S., Ning, J., & Moulson, M. C. (2022). Naturalistic face learning in infants and adults. Psychological Science, 33, 135-151.
Safar, K., & Moulson, M. C. (2020). Three-month-old infants show enhanced behavioral and neural sensitivity to fearful faces. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 42, 100759.