Elizabeth A. Simpson, Ph.D.
Assoc. Professor
Director, Social Cognition Laboratory
- Dr. Simpson's research focuses on understanding infant social cognitive development, including the ultimate and proximate mechanisms that shape individual differences in social perception. She longitudinally studies human and nonhuman primate infant development, including studies of imitation and face perception.
- With a National Science Foundation Career Award, she is examining neonatal imitation as a predictor of human infant sociality using eye-tracking and salivary oxytocin assays.
- Dr. Simpson is co-leading the ManyBabies6 Project on Neonatal Imitation. ManyBabies is a collaborative project for replication and best practices in developmental psychology research. Our goal is to bring researchers together to address difficult outstanding theoretical and methodological questions about the nature of early development and how it is studied.
- With a National Institutes of Health SBIR Award she is developing an Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) based neurological screening method to detect increased risk for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and other neurological conditions in newborns.
- As the Associate Director of the Child Division, she is the Coordinator of the Developmental Psychology PhD Program.
- Three graduate students are currently supervised by Dr. Simpson: Guangyu Zeng (joined in 2018), Tiffany Leung (joined in 2020), and Arushi Malik (joined in 2022). Dr. Simpson will be considering accepting new graduate students to the Developmental Psychology PhD Program to start in the fall of 2024.
- She is an Associate Editor for the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, Scientific Reports, and Frontiers in Neuroscience - Neurodevelopment. Her peer review and editorial contributions can be viewed on Web of Science.
- To follow Dr. Simpson's research updates, visit her lab's Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Education
| 2011 | Ph.D. Behavioral & Brain Sciences Program, Psychology, University of Georgia |
| 2008 | M.S. Neuroscience and Behavior Program, Psychology, University of Georgia |
| 2005 | B.A. Psychology, University of Arizona |
Professional Experience
| 2020 - | Associate Professor, University of Miami |
| 2015 - 2020 | Assistant Professor , University of Miami |
| 2011 - 2015 | Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Parma, Italy |
Honors & Acknowledgements
James McKeen Cattell Sabbatical Award, 2021-2022
National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2017-2023
Scholarly and Creative Activities Recognition Award, University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, 2017
Provost Research Award, University of Miami, 2017
Association for Psychological Science Rising Star, 2015
National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation Research Grant, Phase 1, 2019-2020
Provost Research Award, 2019-2020
University of Miami Student Supervisor of the Year 2019
- Dr. Simpson's current research projects focus on understanding human infants' early social skills, including neonatal imitation, face perception, and gaze following. She primarily uses behavioral measures, including eye-tracking and face-to-face interaction tasks.
- In her Social Cognition Laboratory she is currently collecting data from human infants. Her research with nonhuman primate infants is done through collaborations.
- For an updated list of publications, please see Dr. Simpson's Google Scholar.
Selected Publications
Zeng, G., Maylott, S. E., Leung, T. S., Messinger, D., Wang, J., & Simpson, E. A. (2022). Infant temperamental fear, pupil dilation, and gaze aversion from smiling strangers. Developmental Psychobiology, 64(7), e22324. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22324
Simpson, E. A., Maylott, S. E., Mitsven, S. G., Zeng, G., & Jakobsen, K. V. (2020). Face detection in 2-to 6-month-old infants is influenced by gaze direction and species. Developmental Science, 23(2), e12902.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/desc.12902
Simpson, E. A., Robinson, L. M., & Paukner, A. (2019). Infant rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) personality and subjective well-being. PLoS ONE, 14(12), e0226747.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?type=printable&id=10.1371/journal.pone.0226747
