Professor

Prof. Dr. Christine Michl

Professor of early childhood development

E-Mail:	[email protected]
Phone:	+49365-773-407-25

About me

Since December 2022, Prof. Dr. Christine Michel works as a professor of Early Child Development in the course “Inclusive Childhood Pedagogy”.

Christine Michel studied psychology at Heidelberg University. In 2016, she obtained her PhD at the Department of Developmental Psychology and Biopsychology at Heidelberg University. In her studies, she investigated (neural) attentional processes in early childhood and examined how infants learn from others. From 2016 till 2020 she conducted her research on neural correlates of social interactions and learning as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig as part of the independent research group “Early Social Cognition”. Amongst other things, she investigated early social (neural) learning processes during mother-infant interactions.

2017 she finished the theoretical part of the advanced training in behavioral parent-child psychotherapy at the Zentrum für Psychologische Psychotherapie in Heidelberg.

In 2020, she moved to Leipzig University and engaged in research and teaching as a postdoc at the Department Early Childhood Development and Culture. Coming from cognition, Christine Michel broadened the scope of her research by having a closer look at emotions in her third-party funded (DFG) project “The affective mechanism underlying joint attention and joint action in infancy and toddlerhood”. The project examined affective reactions and mechanism during social interactions and prosocial situations in infants and toddlers.

Prof. Dr. Michel is a member of the German Psychological Society (DGPs) and the International Congress of Infant Studies. She frequently engages in ad-hoc reviewing, for example for Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Infancy and Child Development.

Research interests

• Social cognition in early childhood

• Affective mechanisms of social interactions and information processing

• Method development in early childhood research

Excerpt

I have contributed to these publications

* kennzeichnen geteilte Erst- oder Letztautorenschaften

Kayhan Wagner, E., Nguyen, T., Matthes, D., Langeloh, M., Michel, C., Jiang, J., & Hoehl, S. (2022). Interpersonal neural synchrony when predicting others’ actions during a game of rock-paper-scissors. Scientific Reports, 12, 12967 (2022). doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-16956-z
Michel C, Pauen S, Hoehl S. (2022). When it pays off to take a look: Infants learn to follow an object's motion with their gaze-Especially if it features eyes. Infancy 27(3):515-532. doi: 10.1111/infa.12464.
Kayhan Wagner, E., Matthes, D., Michel, C., Langeloh, M., Banki, A., Mariott, I., Wass, S., & Hoehl, S. (2022). DEEP: A dual-EEG pipeline for adult and infant hyperscanning studies. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 54. 10.1016/j.dcn.2022.101104
Menn, K. H.*, Michel, C.*, Meyer, L., Hoehl, S., & Männel, C. (2022). Natural Infant-Directed Speech Facilitates Neural Tracking of Prosody. NeuroImage, 251, 118991. Advance online publication. doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.118991 Publikationen Michel (Stand November 2022)
Thiele, M., Hepach, R., Michel, C.*, & Haun, D. B. M.* (2021). Observing others’ joint attention increases 9-month-old infants’ object encoding. Developmental Psychology, 57(6), 837-850. doi.org/10.1037/dev0001189
Köster M, Langeloh M, Michel C, Hoehl S. (2021). Young infants process prediction errors at the theta rhythm. Neuroimage. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118074.
Thiele, M., Hepach, R., Michel, C. and Haun, D. (2021), Infants’ Preference for Social Interactions Increases from 7 to 13 Months of Age. Child Development, 92, 25772594. doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13636 
Köster, M., Langeloh, M., Michel, C., & Hoehl, S. (2021). Young infants process prediction errors at the theta rhythm. NeuroImage, 236, 118074. doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118074
Thiele, M., Hepach, R., Michel, C., Gredebäck, G., & Haun, D. B. M. (2021). Social interaction targets enhance 13-month-old infants’ associative learning. Infancy, 26(3), 409–422. doi.org/10.1111/infa.12393
Michel, C., Kayhan, E., Pauen, S. and Hoehl, S. (2021), Effects of Reinforcement Learning on Gaze Following of Gaze and Head Direction in Early Infancy: An Interactive EyeTracking Study. Child Development, 92: e364-e382. doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13497 
Frank MC, Alcock KJ, Arias-Trejo N, et al. Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. 2020;3(1):24-52. doi:10.1177/2515245919900809
Michel, C., Wronski, C., Pauen, S., Daum, M. M., & Hoehl, S. (2019). Infants’ object processing is guided specifically by social cues. Neuropsychologia, 126, 54- 61. doi: dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.05.022
Michel, C., Pauen, S., & Hoehl, S. (2017). Schematic eye-gaze cues influence infants’ object encoding dependent on their contrast polarity. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 7347. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-07445-9
Michel, C., Kaduk, K., Ní Choisdealbha, Á., & Reid, V. M. (2017). Event-related potentials discriminate familiar and unusual goal outcomes in 5-month-olds and adults. Developmental Psychology, 53(10), 1833–1843. doi.org/10.1037/dev0000376 
Michel, C., Stets, M., Parise, E., Reid, V.M., Striano, T., & Hoehl, S. (2015). Theta- and alpha-band EEG activity in response to eye gaze cues in early infancy. NeuroImage, 118, 576-583. doi: dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.06.042
Hoehl, S., Michel, C., Reid, V. M., Parise, E., & Striano, T. (2014). Live social interaction influences infants’ oscillatory brain activity. Social Neuroscience, 9(3), 300-308. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2014.884982
Michel, C., Hoehl, S., & Striano, T. (2014). The Influence of Familiarity on Explicit Eye Gaze Judgment in Preschoolers. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 11(3), 344355 doi: 10.1080/17405629.2013.832670
Wahl, S., Michel, C., Pauen, S., & Hoehl, S. (2013). Head and eye movements affect object processing in 4-month-old infants more than an artificial orientation cue. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 31(2), 212-230. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12001
Hoehl, S., Wahl, S., Michel, C., & Striano, T. (2012). Effects of eye gaze cues provided by the caregiver compared to a stranger on infants’ object processing. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2(1), 81-89. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2011.07.015 Buchkapitel
Michel, C.: Von Rasseln und Rätselkisten - Soziales Lernen als Schlüssel zum Menschsein. In: Menschsein. Die Anfänge unserer Kultur, S. 93 - 100 (Hg. Giemsch, L., Haidle, M. N.). Nünnerich-Asmus Verlag & Media GmbH, Oppenheim am Rhein (2021)
Hoehl, S., Michel, C.: Der lange Weg zum ersten Satz: Sprachentwicklung in den ersten Lebensjahren. In: Sprache, Kommunikation und Musik: Aktuelle Beiträge zur Diagnostik und Therapie, S. 19 - 30 (Hg. Mall, V.; Voigt, F.; Jung, N. H.). Schmidt Römhild, Lübeck (2018) Ausgewählte Blogbeiträge
Michel, C. (2021) Baby, sleep well in your Bettgestell! – aber wo sollen wir das Bettgestell nur hinstellen? In-Mind Blog: de.in-mind.org/blog/post/baby- sleep-well-in-yourbettgestell-aber-wo-sollen-wir-das-bettgestell-nur-hinstellen
Michel, C. (2020) Hey, Baby, lass‘ uns zusammen lachen! In-Mind Blog: de.inmind.org/blog/post/hey-baby-lass-uns-zusammen-lachen
Michel, C. (2019) Lügen auf kurzen Beinen – wie sich prosoziales Lügen in der Kindheit entwickelt. In-Mind Blog:https://de.in-mind.org/blog/post/luegen-auf- kurzen-beinenwie-sich-prosoziales-luegen-in-der-kindheit-entwickelt