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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · 15d

We are so excited to welcome Dr. Ryan Brown, Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University, who is joining our lab on a micro-sabbatical! Her research focuses on the role of love and loss in shaping mental and physical health across the lifespan.
@ryanlinnbrown.bsky.social
@starlabteam.bsky.social

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · 28d

These exciting results highlight the potential of LLM-powered linguistic analysis to detect people who are struggling with anxiety and depression. They also deepen our understanding of the interpersonal processes that support effective therapy.

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · 28d

LLMs can also expand beyond only analyzing client language and estimate how strongly therapists encouraged distance in their clients. Ratings also tracked changing symptoms when word-counting approaches could not!

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · 28d

We have a new paper published in @cpsyjournal.bsky.social! We used large-language models (LLMs) to estimate linguistic distance in psychotherapy text and found that these ratings tracked with clients’ symptoms in treatment over time, more strongly than word-counting techniques did.

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · 28d

These exciting results highlight the potential of LLM-powered linguistic analysis to detect people who are struggling with anxiety and depression. They also deepen our understanding of the interpersonal processes that support effective therapy.

Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · 28d

LLMs can also expand beyond only analyzing client language and also estimate how strongly therapists encouraged distance in their clients. Ratings also tracked changing symptoms when word-counting approaches could not!

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Sep 5

The academic year has officially begun! Looking forward to a fantastic Fall semester together! 😄

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Aug 5

We are very proud to announce that Dr. Erik Nook is the recipient of the Society for Research in Psychopathology’s 2025 Early Career Award! Congratulations @eriknook.bsky.social 🎉

Our Organization | Society for Research in Psychopathology

psychopathology.org

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Jul 9

Exciting day — we have a new lab manager, joining us from Stanford! Emily is interested in studying how people process and communicate emotional experiences, especially in clinical settings. Let's give her a warm welcome!

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Jun 5

Cheering on a baseball game, @trentonthunder.com, with an amazing summer lab team!

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · May 16

What a year it's been for the lab - so many incredible accomplishments! A special shoutout to Angie on her graduation and all of her outstanding work. Our junior students also wrapped up strong projects and are heading into senior year, ready for discoveries.

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Apr 28

Huge congratulations to Chantal @talvaldivia.bsky.social
for receiving an NSF Honorable Mention and to Dan
@danmirea.bsky.social for being awarded a Procter Fellowship from the Graduate School earlier this month! We’re so proud of their achievements!

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Mar 26

Join us in congratulating our lab’s incredible poster presenters at SAS 2025! We’re so proud of their hard work and accomplishments.

@raziasahi.bsky.social
@claire-whiting.bsky.social
@hennavartiainen.bsky.social
@smesquiti.bsky.social
@milkawaniak.bsky.social
Angie Challman

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Mar 26

We’re thrilled to celebrate Erik for co-authoring the Best Paper at SAS (Nencheva et al., 2024) and Dan for winning the Diversity Award!

Beyond these achievements, our lab members gave fantastic talks: @eriknook.bsky.social @raziasahi.bsky.social @danmirea.bsky.social @claire-whiting.bsky.social

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Mar 11

Last but not least, we have a great lineup of fantastic presentations on the final day. Hope to see you at SAS!

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Mar 11

On Friday, we are continuing our SAS presentations with three amazing lab members - don't miss it!

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Mar 11

We are thrilled about SAS 2025! Mark your calendars to see our lab's latest work! Check out the schedule for Thursday - Emotion Regulation Pre-conference:

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Dec 2

We discuss implications for affective and developmental science in the paper, but one that we're curious about is whether our results explain why folks with low emotion differentiation tend to think of their emotions as merely "happy" or "sad" - these words come to mind first!

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Dec 2

The 1st emotion words that people tended to produce were those they learned earliest in life. Interestingly, the dimensions that shape emotion word accessibility were stable across age: Both children and adults tended to start their responses with words they learned early in life

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Dec 2

We also tested whether affective and linguistic dimensions predicted the order in which participants thought of emotion words. Above and beyond the classic circumplex dimensions (i.e., valence and arousal), the strongest predictor of word order was actually age of acquisition.

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Dec 2

We found that verbal fluency and emotion fluency followed similar age-related trajectories, increasing across childhood and adolescence before plateauing around 18-19 years of age. Thus, emotion fluency seems to be a subtype of verbal fluency, rather than a distinct capacity.

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Dec 2

Here, we measured emotion fluency/verbal fluency by asking participants (4-25 year-olds) to produce as many emotion/fruit words as possible in 1min.

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Dec 2

These studies have only been conducted in adults, leaving the relation between emotion fluency and verbal fluency uncharted in youth, when emotion concepts are still developing.

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Dec 2

A handful of prior studies have examined emotion fluency in adults, seeking to chart the key predictors of emotion fluency and its potential relations with mental health, as facility with emotion words might provide greater efficacy managing one’s emotions

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Logic of Emotion Lab @logicemotionlab.bsky.social · Dec 2

We seek to investigate two central questions: How does the ability to rapidly generate emotion words (i.e., emotion fluency) vary across age? And what can we learn about the organization of emotion words based on how people respond in a task like this?

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