Daniel Messinger

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Daniel S. Messinger is an American interdisciplinary developmental psychologist and professor at the University of Miami. He works across psychology, pediatrics, music engineering, and electrical and computer engineering. He directs the Linda Ray Intervention Center and leads the Child Division in the Psychology Department, the Early Play and Development Lab, and the Social and Behavioral Data Science group at the Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing.

Messinger earned a BA in Psychology (with a Sociology minor) from Haverford College in 1985, an MA in Human Development from the University of Chicago in 1988, and a PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Utah in 1994.

His career began as a Senior Research Associate in Pediatrics at the University of Miami Medical School, followed by roles as an adjunct professor and then professor across psychology, pediatrics, and engineering disciplines. He has led multiple programs and centers at the University of Miami, focusing on development and data science in child psychology.

Messinger’s research explores how children’s emotions, social interactions, and language develop, often using automated methods to analyze large behavioral datasets from video, audio, and location tracking. He studies infants’ emotional and social development and how children interact in inclusive preschool classrooms. He has led long-term studies of infants at risk for autism and has secured funding from major agencies such as the NIH, NSF, and the Institute of Education Sciences.

Key findings include links between maternal depression and insecure attachment, and how early social context shapes the emergence of smiles. He has explored how infants’ emotional communication relates to later development, including work with Alan Fogel on the early onset of smiling and how infants’ smiles are perceived and produced. His work also examines interactions in families with autistic siblings and in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

One notable study estimated an 18.7% recurrence risk for ASD among infant siblings, with higher risk for males and for families with multiple ASD-affected children. He has investigated diagnostic stability in high-risk children and the challenges of early detection and treatment of ASD, including responses to early interventions like Hanen’s More Than Words.

In classroom research, Messinger and colleagues used technologies to study how preschool children interact with peers and teachers in inclusive settings. By combining location tracking with speech analysis, they examined patterns of social contact, peer networks, and language development. Their findings show that children spend most social time with a few peers, that social networks influence language growth, and that children with ASD often interact within similar groups. They also found that the language environment created by teachers affects children’s speech, and that peer language input can boost language development, especially for children from lower-income backgrounds.