Research Groups

Sensorimotor, Affective and Social Development Psychology, UNIGE

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PRESENTATION

The main objective of our research is to better understand the development of sensory-motor, affective and social skills in typical and atypical individuals from birth to late adolescence. Our research has not only theoretical but also practical interests (booklets for parents, pedagogical methods, etc.).

Here are some of the questions our research group is currently addressing:
 
  • In babies and very young children: Visit our Babylab website
    Are babies a few months old able to perceive emotions? Do young children between the ages of 2 and 4 prefer to watch certain types of movements as "biological movements"?
  • In pre-school and school-aged children
    Do children between 5 and 12 take into account (and how) the contextual situation (social or not) when identifying emotional expressions? What factors (listening comprehension, decoding, and vocabulary) support 6-year-olds' learning to read? Does multisensory training promote academic learning such as reading, writing, and math? What are the effects of Montessori pedagogy on the neurocognitive and emotional development of children between the ages of 5 and 12? What are the effects of prematurity on the psychological development of children born prematurely? What can be done about it? How can emotional skills be trained at school?
  • The skills of blind children and adolescents
    How to promote the recognition of tactile images by visually impaired children? How to promote access to art and culture for visually impaired people?

 

DIRECTOR 

Edouard GentazProf. Edouard Gentaz

During his academic career at CNRS, France (1999-212) and at the University of Geneva (since 2012), Prof. Edouard Gentaz has developed several research programs to design and evaluate several types of interventions for young children, involving collaborations with other scientific disciplines. Prof. Gentaz has designed specific interventions to increase children's academic performance. He has also evaluated their effects. He has shown that an effective method to prepare kindergarten children from low and middle socioeconomic status families for reading (Gentaz, Colé, and Bara, 2003; Bara, Gentaz, and Colé, 2007), writing (e.g., Palluel-Germain, Hillairet de Boisferon, Hennion, Gouagout,& Gentaz, 2007; Jolly, Palluel-Germain, & Gentaz, 2010), and mathematics (Pinet & Gentaz, 2007, 2008; Kalénine, Pinet, and Gentaz 2011; Gimbert, Gentaz & Mazens, 2019) consists of the addition of tactile-visual and haptic exploration of geometric letterforms or an approximate number system to the traditional instructional methods.

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Publications