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Welcome to the Seed Lab!

Self-Regulation, Early Experience, and Development Lab

The SEED Lab is dedicated to understanding how early life experiences shape children’s development, learning, and well-being across the lifespan. We investigate the cognitive and contextual predictors of executive function, self-regulation, and resilience, with a special focus on children experiencing adversity.

At the SEED Lab, we explore how the quality of early environments—from families and classrooms to broader social contexts—supports or hinders young children’s development. Our research integrates longitudinal and experimental methods and focuses on three interconnected strands of research:

• Developmental Foundations: Investigating how executive function and self-regulation emerge in early childhood and how they shape later academic and social outcomes.
• Contextual Influences: Examining the role of home, school, and community environments in supporting or constraining children’s development and learning.
• Prevention & Intervention: Designing and evaluating evidence-based strategies to strengthen children’s self-regulatory skills and resilience before formal schooling begins.

We use longitudinal, observational, and experimental methods, working with both local community partners and large national datasets. Our goal is to generate actionable insights that support children’s early success and long-term development.

Research

Current Research Projects

Daily Interactions Study

In line with the early childhood education mission to prepare children for success in school we are conducting a study to understand how children’s language environments in home and child care settings support their early learning.

We plan to examine predictors of children’s language environments and how they predict development of vocabulary, math, literacy, and executive function.

Participants

We plan to recruit 50 families of 3-5 year old children and their preschool teachers.

Research Activities

• We will ask parents to complete a 20-minute survey, and place a LENA recording device on their child to collect a full-day audio recordings (~12 hours each) from a typical weekday where the child attends school and a typical weekend day during the fall and spring of the preschool year
  • Parents will receive $50 in the Fall 2025 and $50 in the Spring 2026 for their participation
• We will ask teachers to complete a 20-minute survey and report any issues with the LENA classroom recording, such as if the child got sick or if there was a fire drill.
  • Teachers will receive $20 in Fall 2025 and $20 in Spring 2025 for their participation
• We will ask children to complete a set of developmentally appropriate assessments to measure their vocabulary, mathematics, and self-regulation skills
  • Children will receive stickers and a small toy for their participation
• We will ask schools to help us secure a space to conduct the child assessments in alignment with organizational policies

Study Procedure

• 2 LENA recordings will be collected in the Fall from September to December 2025
• 2 LENA recordings will be collected in the Spring from February to May 2026

LENA Recording

• The LENA recorder captures the number of words spoken and the number of conversational turns children have.

Contact Information

Please contact Dr. Irem Korucu, ikorucu@fau.edu or seedlab@fau.edu if you have any questions.

Contact

777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL
seedlab@fau.edu

Get Involved

Graduate Students

Please confirm your interest and eligibility by checking the psychology department’s graduate programs web page. If you are interested and eligible to apply, please reach out to Dr. Irem Korucu and include a brief description of your research interests and your CV at ikorucu@fau.edu.

Note that Dr. Korucu will be accepting a graduate student for the 2026-2027 academic year.

Undergraduate Students

You can get involved and have hands-on research experience by taking course credits (Directed Independent Research), volunteering, or completing an honors project. Each of these involvements requires at least 9 hours of commitment per week and preferably a year-long commitment.

Department of Psychology

Publications

Selected publications

Korucu, I., Duncan, R. J., Kenny, S. A., Gonzales, C. R., Ahmadi, A., Karing, J. T., & McClelland, M. M. (2025). The Head–Toes–Knees–Shoulders Task as a Screening Tool for Kindergarten-Level Achievement. Behavioral Sciences, 15(11),

Korucu, I., Paes, T. M., Costello, L.,* Duncan, R. J., Purpura, D. J., & Schmitt, S. A (2023). The role of peers’ executive function and classroom quality in preschoolers’ executive function and academic skills. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 86,

Duncan, R. J., Korucu, I., & Schmitt., S. A. (2023). Variations in early life home environment quality and children’s academic achievement. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 85.

Devlin, B. L., Paes, T. M., Geer, E. A., Bryant, L. M., Zehner, T. M., Korucu, I., Morse, K. E., Duncan, R. J., Purpura, D. J., Schmitt, S. A. (2023). Moving beyond dosage and adherence: A four-step protocol for capturing dimensions of young children’s engagement as a measure of implementation fidelity of social-emotional learning interventions. Frontiers in Psychology.

Korucu, I., Ayturk, E., Finders, J., Schnur, G.,* Bailey, C. S., Tominey, S., & Schmitt, S. A. (2022). Self-regulation in preschool: Examining its factor structure and associations with pre-academic skills and social-emotional competence. Frontiers in Developmental Psychology.

Schmitt, S. A., Finders, J., Duncan, R. J., Korucu, I., Bryant, L., Purpura., D. J., & Elicker, J. (2021). Exploring longitudinal and bidirectional links between executive function and social-emotional competence in early childhood. Developmental Psychology, 57(12), 2093–2105.

Britto, P. R., Hanoz-Penney, S., Pontuga, L. A., Sunar, D., Issa, G., Hein, S. D., Rosario, M. C., Almuneef, M. A., Korucu, I., Togo, Y., Kurbonov, J., Choibekow, N., Phan, H. T. T., Fallon, S., Artukoglu, B., Hartl, F., Salah, R., Fitzpatrick, S., Connolly, P., Dunne, L., Miller, S., Pruett, K., & Leckman, J. (2020). Pathways to a more peaceful and sustainable world: The transformative power of children in families. Development and Psychopathology, 1–12.

Korucu, I., & Schmitt, S. A. (2020). The continuity and change in the home environment and associations with school readiness. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 53, 97-107.

Korucu, I., Litkowski, E., & Schmitt, S. A. (2020). Examining associations between the home literacy environment, executive function, and school readiness. Early Education and Development, 31, 455-473.

Korucu, I., Litkowski, E., Purpura, D. J., & Schmitt, S. A. (2020). Parental executive function as a predictor of parenting practices and children’s executive function. Infant and Child Development, 29, 1-16.

Korucu, I., Rolan, E., Napoli, A. R., Purpura, D. J., & Schmitt, S. A. (2019). Development of the Home Executive Function Environment (HEFE) Scale: Assessing its relation to preschoolers’ executive function. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 47, 9-19.

Schmitt, S. A., Korucu, I., Napoli, A. R., Bryant, L., & Purpura, D. J. (2018). Using block play to enhance preschool children’s mathematics and executive function: A randomized controlled trial. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 44, 181-191.

Korucu, I., Yagmurlu, B., & Harma, M. (2017). Self-regulation: Relations with theory of mind and social behavior. Infant and Child Development, 26, 1-23.

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