{"id":104449,"date":"2025-09-15T16:48:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T20:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=104449"},"modified":"2025-09-23T10:31:28","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T14:31:28","slug":"exploring-the-many-faces-of-distinguished-profs-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2025\/09\/exploring-the-many-faces-of-distinguished-profs-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring the many faces of Distinguished Prof\u2019s research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brock University\u2019s Distinguished Professor designation is a lifetime appointment recognizing outstanding achievement in each recipient\u2019s academic discipline. This series of articles highlights this year\u2019s recipients. Read more about the award and its recipients\u00a0<\/em>on The Brock News<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Conducting research that\u2019s equally interesting to scholars and viewers of popular science<\/a> and true-crime reality TV shows, Distinguished Professor Catherine Mondloch is a globally recognized expert in face perception.<\/p>\n

Mondloch is particularly known for her work on the role of experience in face processing. She has published numerous studies investigating age-related change in face perception during childhood, building a new body of knowledge in a field typically focused on either infants or adults.<\/p>\n

She says that adapting experiments designed for adults to try to engage children requires a lot of creativity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you want to understand how face perception develops across childhood, you have to take tasks developed for adults and turn them into tasks that are fun for children\u201d says Mondloch. \u201cIf children become bored, they\u2019ll say, \u2018I\u2019m done\u2019 and slide off their chair.\u201d<\/p>\n

A member of Brock\u2019s Department of Psychology since 2004, Mondloch is among the world\u2019s top 2 per cent of most-cited scientists<\/a> with over 100 peer-reviewed publications. The third edition of her co-authored text, Essentials of Lifespan Development<\/em>, will be released in 2026.<\/p>\n

She has served as the Chair of the Department of Psychology as well as Associate Chair, Undergraduate Officer and a member of several committees. She also served a term on the Brock University Faculty Association executive.<\/p>\n

In addition to extensive research funding from Canada\u2019s tri-council and other funding bodies, she received Brock\u2019s Award for Distinguished Research and Creative Activity in 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mondloch\u2019s passion for face perception research grew out of her expertise in animal behaviour. Shortly after completing her PhD and beginning a career in academia, she decided to pivot, turning from studying sibling competition among nestlings to the study of human development.<\/p>\n

She joined the lab of Professor Daphne Maurer at McMaster University, where she first encountered face perception research.<\/p>\n

Mondloch says she never looked back.<\/p>\n

\u201cFace perception aligned well with my research experience with animals and with thinking about skills that have evolved over time to serve an adaptive function,\u201d she says. \u201cFace perception is an incredibly broad topic. It lets me think about development, cognition and perception. It has so many facets to it that when I get bored with one component, I can segue to another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over her career, Mondloch has studied emotion perception, face recognition, perceptions of attractiveness, neural mechanisms, facial impressions of personality traits and the influence of early visual deprivation on face processing.<\/p>\n

She was an Associate Investigator of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders 2012-2019, and frequently sends students to work under the supervision of colleagues around the world. As one of only a small number of researchers investigating face perception among children, Mondloch says she values international collaborations.<\/p>\n

Currently, Mondloch and her team in the Face Perception Lab are examining first impressions across the lifespan and the ability to recognize faces despite variations in personal appearance.<\/p>\n

A supportive supervisor of post-doctoral fellow and graduate and undergraduate students, Mondloch was recognized with the Michael Plyley Graduate Mentorship Award in 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She says she prioritizes being a good mentor both because of excellent mentorship she received and because she finds researching with students very rewarding.<\/p>\n

“My designation as a Distinguished Professor is a reflection of the excellent undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows with whom I’ve had the privilege of working.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conducting research that\u2019s equally interesting to scholars and viewers of popular science and true-crime reality TV shows, Distinguished Professor Catherine Mondloch is a globally recognized expert in face perception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":104443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,5,38],"tags":[3357,13742,13675,522,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104449"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104449"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104691,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104449\/revisions\/104691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}