Michele Morningstar
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
B.A. (Hon.), McGill University, 2011
Ph.D., McGill University, 2017
Name Pronunciation Guide:
"mih-SHELL more-ning-star"
Click below to hear pronunciation
Research Interests
My research focuses on the development of emotional communication and social cognition from childhood to adulthood. I am particularly interested in the ways in which we learn to express and perceive emotional states through nonverbal cues, such as tone of voice. I use a variety of methods, including speech analysis and functional neuroimaging, to determine how these basic emotional skills contribute to our social functioning and psychological well-being across development.
Selected Publications
Davis, S.K., Morningstar, M., Dirks, M.A., & Qualter, P. (2020). Ability emotional intelligence: What about recognition of emotion in voices? Personality and Individual Differences, 160, 109938. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.109938
Morningstar, M., Nowland, R., Dirks, M.A., & Qualter, P. (2019). Loneliness and the recognition of vocal socio-emotional expressions in adolescence. Cognition & Emotion. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2019.1682971
Morningstar, M., Mattson, W.I., Venticinque, J., Singer, Jr., S., Selvaraj, B., Hu, H.H., & Nelson, E.E. (2019). Age-related differences in neural activation and functional connectivity during the processing of vocal prosody in adolescence. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 19(6), 1418-1432. doi: 10.3758/s13415-019-00742-y
Morningstar, M., Grannis, C., Mattson, W.I., & Nelson, E.E. (2019). Associations between adolescents’ social re-orientation towards peers over caregivers and neural response to teenage faces. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 13(108). doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00108
Morningstar, M., Garcia, D., Dirks, M.A., & Bagner, D.M. (2019). Changes in parental prosody mediate effect of parent-training intervention on child language outcomes. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 87(3), 313-318. doi: 10.1037/ccp0000375
Morningstar, M., Dirks, M.A., Rappaport, B.I., Pine, D.S., & Nelson, E.E. (2019; ePub 2017). Associations between anxious and depressive symptoms and the recognition of vocal socio-emotional expressions in youth. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 48(3), 491-500. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2017.1350963
Morningstar, M., Venticinque, J., & Nelson, E.E. (2019; ePub 2018). Differences in adult and adolescent listeners’ ratings of valence and arousal in emotional prosody. Cognition & Emotion, 33(7), 1497-1504. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2018.1561422
Morningstar, M., Nelson, E.E., & Dirks, M.A. (2018). Maturation of vocal emotion recognition: Insights from the developmental and neuroimaging literature. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 90, 221-230. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2018.04.019
Morningstar, M., Ly, V.Y., Feldman, L., & Dirks, M.A. (2018). Mid-Adolescents’ and Adults’ Recognition of Vocal Cues of Emotion and Social Intent: Differences by Expression and Speaker Age. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 42(2), 237-251. doi: 10.1007/s10919-018-0274-7
Morningstar, M., Dirks, M.A., & Huang, S. (2017). Vocal Cues Underlying Youth and Adult Portrayals of Socio-Emotional Expressions. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 41(2), 155-183. doi: 10.1007/s10919-017-0250-7