“The greatest job to me is to be able to be curious about something and to pursue it,” says Dr. Nicole Perry ’13, ’16.
That curiosity is what led her to research children’s emotional control. It’s what attracted her to the work that UNC Greensboro’s research professors were doing in Human Development and Family Studies.
“I see kids interact all the time,” she says. “I have my own children. It’s such a great privilege to be able to think about these things in complex ways. And then really try to understand why and how something works that way.”
Developmental scientists like Perry – now an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin – are learning about a critical timeframe in which children develop emotion regulation and how it impacts the rest of their life.