Newest psychology faculty member researches how our brains process emojis 🧐

As you read this sentence, think about where your eyes fall on each word. The optimal placement, according to Assistant Professor Andriana Christofalos, is just left of center.

Christofalos, the newest faculty member in the Department of Psychological Sciences, studies how we read. She uses advanced tools like eye-tracking to follow the physical processes associated with reading. Her lab can see how fast readers move from word to word, when they backtrack in a passage, how long they fixate on certain words and how frequently they can skip words.

These eye movements are lower-level processes associated with reasoning. They are the focus of Christofalos's research, which covers everything from reading with schizophrenia to how we read passages with emojis.

The latter has a surprisingly deep history in the literature of psychology.

"Back in the day, it was emoticons," Christofalos said. "A lot of people studied the winking emoticon and how that supports comprehension of sarcasm and irony."

The massive library of emojis available today has created a rich field of scholarly opportunities around multimodal processing, or the way we read material that includes elements beyond text. That could be a book with illustrations or, in modern times, a text message packed with emojis.

No matter what Christofalos is pursuing, she works hard to actively involve students in her research projects. Student research was a core part of Christofalos's own journey into academia.

"Like most students in psychology, I started out wanting to go the clinical route," she said. "I wanted to be a psychiatrist and go to medical school. Then I joined a research lab and I was just amazed. I knew that this is what I wanted to do."

Christofalos is currently recruiting undergraduate research assistants for her lab. Student researchers will get experience using tools like eye-tracking and have a say in research direction. For today's students, who were raised on digital devices, that could mean more emoji research in the pipeline

"Students really like helping out with that research," Christofalos said. "So I'm excited to get started again with Boise State students."

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