Developmental Psychology Research Group
Developmental Psychology Research Group
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Developmental Psychology Research Group
Developmental Psychology Research Group
Overview
Our Developmental Psychology Research Group brings together psychologists, neuroscientists, and comparative developmental psychologists. We study different aspects of brain, cognitive, and social development, from birth through the entire lifespan.
We use a variety of techniques, including high-density EEG, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and eye-tracking. We also use observational and qualitative methods.
A key part of our work is actively engaging with children and families in East London, one of the most diverse areas in the UK, both socioeconomically and demographically.
Current research
Dr Elena Serena Piccardi's research focuses on the early development of sensory perception in both typical and atypical children. She takes a multimodal approach, investigating the individual and environmental factors that influence a child's sensory sensitivity and their desire for sensory input.
In collaboration with Professor Sam Wass, Elena is also supervising doctoral research that examines both the short-term and long-term mechanisms of sensory regulation.
In addition to her research, Elena is passionate about research reproducibility and replicability. She currently serves as UEL's Local Lead for the UK Reproducibility Network and is collaborating with other leads to assess the awareness and adoption of open research practices both nationally and internationally.
Elena has been involved in several prospective longitudinal studies:
The STAARS project explores the early sensory development of infant siblings of autistic children, children with ADHD, and typically developing children.
The Predictive Learning study investigates how sensory preferences drive media choices in early childhood.
Children’s Autism Technology-Assisted Assessments (CHATA) project
The Children's Autism Technology-Assisted Assessments (CHATA) project was created to develop a new, open-source autism diagnostic pathway for children using telehealth.
Traditional assessments are often expensive and time-consuming, resulting in long waiting lists. They also tend to be less accessible for non-white and non-English speaking families. The CHATA project aims to address these issues by providing an efficient, equitable, and culturally sensitive diagnostic tool.
The CHATA system was co-designed with NHS staff, allowing it to be easily integrated into existing NHS digital systems. A key priority has been to ensure the tool is relevant for ethnically and linguistically diverse populations. The project and its pathway were developed with extensive patient and public involvement.
CHATA is currently being piloted in the London Borough of Newham. This is a project conducted in collaboration with East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT), University College London (UCL), and UEL (lead from UEL - Dr Georgia Lockwood Estrin).
Autism and homelessness
Led by Dr Georgia Lockwood Estrin at UEL, this project is funded by Autistica and aims to improve support for autistic individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
Research shows that autistic people may be up to 12 times more likely to experience homelessness, yet there are very few support options tailored to their specific needs. The project's long-term goal is to increase access to services and ultimately reduce periods of homelessness by providing autism training for staff.
The project also seeks to better understand the experiences of autistic people who are homeless, with a particular focus on women, whose lived experiences have often been ignored or misrepresented.
As part of this work, an Autism and Homelessness Toolkit was developed for service providers and launched on the Homeless Link website in April 2024. The project heavily relies on co-production methods and involves a large network of collaborators, including the National Autistic Society, Homeless Link, Resources for Autism, Westminster City Council, the University of Bristol, and the University of Oxford.
For more information about this project, see the Birbeck website and the Autistica website.
Scalable TRansdiagnostic Early Assessment of Mental health
STREAM (Scalable TRansdiagnostic Early Assessment of Mental Health) is a multi-year MRC-funded project to assess child neurodevelopment in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) using open-source, scalable, mobile technology. The tablet-based app will combine and build upon existing screening tools (DEEP, INDIGO, START) developed by members of the STREAM project team. This is a highly collaborative project, across multiple institutions and countries, led by the University of Reading. Dr Georgia Lockwood Estrin is the UEL collaborator. For more information on this project, see the STREAM website.
Eye-tracking Assessment for childRen with Autism (EIRA)
Eye-tracking Assessment for childRen with Autism (EIRA) was a project funded by a Sir Henry Wellcome post-doc fellowship awarded to Dr Georgia Lockwood Estrin (Birkbeck and UEL). The project focuses on establishing the ability, feasibility and acceptability of using portable eye-tracking technology to identify children with an elevated likelihood of Autism Spectrum Conditions in low-income contexts, specifically in India. This project is in collaboration with Sangath and AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences).
Childhood development of efficient attentional deployment and gaze
Dr Mark Harwood’s research focuses on how children learn to deploy the fundamental building blocks of attention and eye movements most efficiently.
Where our attention goes, our eyes often quickly follow. Making too many eye movements disrupts the intake of visual information, while too few limits our intake. Mark’s work suggests that typical adults have learned an efficient balance between exploratory movement and exploiting the current viewpoint (movement inhibition), while adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have some impairments in inhibition.
The project aims are, therefore, to study how coordinated attention deployment and gaze develop over early years (especially 0-12 years old), and whether there are emerging differences in sub-populations displaying signs of ADHD.
The methods used are controlled lab-based studies of attention with simultaneous eye tracking, and computational models of attention, decision-making and eye movements.
Data collection is ongoing, and volunteer participants are always welcome.
Perceptions of foreign-accented speakers
Dr Miha Constantinescu’s project examines how listeners perceive competence and trustworthiness in speakers with foreign accents, considering factors such as context, gender, and accent strength. It combines qualitative and quantitative methods, including lived experience interviews. Accents studied include Romanian, Georgian, Polish, Russian, Indian, Sri Lankan, and South African.
Accent perception in education
A collaborative study between the University of East London (UEL) and the Open University, focusing on how accents affect perceptions and interactions in educational settings.
Accent stereotypes and AI in recruitment
In collaboration with the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS), this project explores how accent bias may be embedded in AI-driven recruitment technologies
Equal opportunities for Eastern European migrants
This recent initiative aims to develop interventions to reduce accent bias and promote fair treatment of Eastern European migrants living and working in the UK.
UEL Institute for the Science of the Early Years
The UEL Institute for the Science of the Early Years (ISEY), (led by Prof Sam Wass), is home to several ongoing research projects funded by prestigious organisations like the European Research Council, Medical Research Council, and the Leverhulme Trust.
The lab's main goal is to understand how a child's early life, including their home environment, influences their future school readiness and mental health.
To accomplish this, they use a range of innovative techniques. This includes dual parent-child EEG, as well as miniaturised microphones, cameras, and stress monitors that babies and parents can wear at home.
For further details of their projects, see the ISEY website.
Our core team
Dr Miha Constantinescu
Keywords: Non-native accents, perceptions of competence, equal opportunities, accent bias, multilingualism
Dr Miha Constantinescu’s research explores the intersection of language, social perception, and equal opportunities, with a particular focus on accent bias and multilingualism. Her work investigates how linguistic diversity influences perceptions of competence, trustworthiness, and fairness in various social and professional contexts. Dr Constantinescu welcomes PhD proposals related to language, accents, and social perception. For enquiries, please contact: m.constantinescu@uel.ac.uk. View Miha's publications on her staff profile.
Professor Caroline Edmonds
Keywords: Dehydration, neonatal Hypoxic Ischaemic Encephalopathy, premature babies, forest school
Prof. Caroline Edmonds is a professor of experimental psychology at the University of East London. Her research interests fall into three main areas: how water supplementation affects cognitive functions, identifying which specific processes are influenced and exploring the underlying mechanisms at play; the impact of pre and postnatal nutrition on brain structure and function as well as the long-lasting effects on neurodevelopment to children who experience adverse events during that period or those who are born small with intrauterine growth restriction; thirdly, the impact of natural environments such as forest school on cognition and wellbeing. For enquiries, please contact: c.edmonds@uel.ac.uk.
Dr Mary-Jane Budd
Keywords: Menopause, menstrual health and cognition
Dr Mary-Jane Budd is interested in menopause and cognition. Mary-Jane is looking for enthusiastic and scientifically minded people to work in her lab using experimental approaches and electrophysiological methods such as EEG and eye-tracking to investigate research questions such as: Does menopause exacerbate ADHD symptoms or mimic them? What are the underlying deficits in word-finding difficulties in menopause? How does menopause affect sleep? Mary-Jane would be happy to hear from anyone interested in working with her on these topics. For enquiries, please contact: m.budd@uel.ac.uk.
Dr Mark Harwood
Keywords: Eye movements, attention, decision-making, learning, active vision
Dr Mark Harwood first trained at Great Ormond Street Hospital in the Visual Sciences Unit, specialising in eye movement control. Eye movement patterns are an important neurological assessment, both following injury and during development. Current research interests include the development of ‘active vision’ in children—how eye movements are learned to best serve the visual system via coordinated adaptation, decision-making, and motor control. For enquiries, please contact: M.Harwood@uel.ac.uk.
Dr Georgia Lockwood Estrin
Keywords: Attentional control in autism, neurodiversity, mobile health technology
Dr Georgia Lockwood Estrin’s research interests lie in neurodevelopment, culture and autism, global mental health, women's mental health and neuro-ethics. Her current research focuses on the interface between developmental neuroscience and public health, and specifically on the translation of neuroscientific methods into global mental health to improve identification of children with developmental disorders in low-resource settings. Her research interests extend to the impact and intersection between socio-economic factors, culture and autism, and barriers to diagnosis in low-resource settings. For enquiries, please contact: G.Lockwood-estrin@uel.ac.uk.
View Georgia's publications on her staff profile.
To read her papers and book chapters, please see her Google Scholar profile.
Dr Elena Serena Piccardi
Keywords: Sensory perception; sensory regulation; individual differences; neurodevelopment; reproducibility/replicability
Dr Elena Serena Piccardi’s research examines the early development of sensory perception through a multimodal framework, identifying individual and environmental determinants of sensory sensitivity and input-seeking in childhood. She has contributed to longitudinal studies such as STAARS, investigating sensory trajectories in infants at elevated likelihood of autism or ADHD, and the Predictive Learning study, linking sensory preferences to early media engagement. In collaboration with Professor Sam Wass, she supervises doctoral work on mechanisms of sensory regulation across developmental timescales. As UEL’s Lead for the UK Reproducibility Network, she is also interested in reproducibility and open science practices. For enquiries, please contact: E.S.Piccardi@uel.ac.uk.
Professor Sam Wass
Keywords: attention, regulation, co-regulation, early environments, noise
Professor Sam Wass is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist who is Director of the Institute for the Science of Early Years and Youth (ISEY) at UEL. ISEY is based in Stratford, East London, in one of the most sociodemographically diverse regions in the world. We develop innovative, world-leading methods to study how early environments shape early development. We then use these insights to provide consultancy, training, and policy advice. More details can be found on the ISEY website, and the ISEY accounts on X, Instagram and Facebook, or on Sam's LinkedIn account, or personal website.