CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN
COGNITION & NEUROSCIENCES/ConnexConnex

Social exclusion, a painful experience that threatens key psychological needs, such as self-esteem and sense of belonging, is known to affect adults’ physiology, cognition, behaviour, and processing of social cues. However, research on how children and infants respond after experiencing exclusion events remains limited. In this talk, I will present and discuss findings from a series of studies exploring how social exclusion impacts the development of crucial skills implicated in the interpretation of others’ behaviours. I will begin by exploring how infants and children react emotionally and behaviourally during an exclusion event and how this might influence their ability to process faces both at the neural and behavioural levels. Additionally, I will examine how ostracism affects children’s propensity to learn through imitation. Overall, this talk will provide evidence suggesting that exclusion alters the processing of social cues from the first months of life, potentially impacting how humans navigate social interactions throughout their development.