At the Child Study Center at Rutgers University, we study the emotional development of infants and young children over the course of the lifespan. Through our research, we ask: What are emotions? How do we learn about emotions over time? Do emotions affect the way we perceive and learn about the world around us? Can prior experiences affect the way we experience and regulate our emotions? While these questions are relevant to humans over the entire lifespan, we focus our research specifically on young children and infants. By focusing on young children, we can study how emotions develop from the earliest part of our lives, and perhaps figure out ways that we can help children and families develop healthy social relationships early on, so that they can grow up into happy and healthy adults.