Elizabeth daSilva, Ph.D.

Phone:

812-348-7282

Email:

elabendy@iu.edu

Department:

Division of Science

Professional Summary

Dr. Liz daSilva investigates emotion perception, self-regulation, and social cognition in children and adults. She was driven towards a career in academic psychology because she was fascinated by individual differences in socio-emotional functioning: why are some people so adept at reading and acting on social cues while others fail to do so? Of particular interest is understanding the early emergence of individual differences in responsiveness to emotional information. Her current research aims to clarify the many factors that influence the development of self-regulation from infancy through toddlerhood, particularly the role of parenting and children’s own temperament. She is also interested in how children and adults form social judgments from nonverbal emotional displays. She combines behavioral, physiological, electrophysiological (EEG) and self-report measures to investigate these questions.

Dr. daSilva received her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from Indiana University-Bloomington (IUB) and then completed postdoctoral training in Developmental Psychology at IUB. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Psychology at IUPUC. 

Representative publications:

• Kolacz, J.^, daSilva, E.B.^, Lewis, G.F., Bertenthal, B.I., & Porges, S.W. (2022). Associations between acoustic features of maternal speech and infants’ emotion regulation following a social stressor. Infancy, 27(1), 135-158.  https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12440
• Abney, D.H.^, daSilva, E.B.^, Bertenthal, B.I. (2021). Associations between infant-mother physiological synchrony and 4- to 6-month-old infants’ emotion regulation. Developmental Psychobiology, 63(6), e22161. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22161
• Abney, D.H., daSilva, E.B., Lewis, G.F., & Bertenthal, B.I. (2021). A method for measuring dynamic respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in infants and mothers. Infant Behavior & Development, 63 (May), 101569. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101569
• daSilva, E.B., Crager, K.^{^^}, Geisler, D. ^{^^}, Newbern, P. ^{^^}, Orem, B. ^{^^}, & Puce, A. (2016). Something to sink your teeth into: The presence of teeth augments ERPs to mouth expressions. Neuroimage, 127, 227-241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.12.020
• daSilva, E.B., Crager, K. ^{^^}, & Puce, A. (2016). On dissociating the neural time course of the processing of positive emotions. Neuropsychologia, 83, 123-137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.12.001

^=joint first authorship,  ^^= student co-author