Our overall goal is to produce developmental scientists who bring new insight into the understanding of developmental process from a multi-leveled approach. We seek to train ethical scientists who are also good mentors and to increase diversity in the scientific community.
This is our 27th year and we are proud to introduce our predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees for the 2021-2022 year.
Research Interests: My research investigates infants' early visual experience with inter-object relations. Using head-mounted cameras to capture the infant's point of view in naturalistic settings, we can understand what the distribution of spatial relations is in the environment and what roles age, context, and parents play in shaping these.
Faculty Supervisors: Linda Smith, Mike Jones and Richard Betzel Research Interests: My research focuses on the relationship between lexical and phonological bases of word learning in children with typical and atypical language development. I am particularly interested in detecting principles of organization and structure in word and sound learning using network-based approaches.
Faculty Supervisor: Emily Fyfe and John Bates Research Interests: My research focuses on the relation between individual differences in cognitive skills, such as executive function, and science and math learning in early childhood. I am particularly interested in determining how cognition may influence the effectiveness of specific instructional approaches and materials to optimize learning.
Research Interests: Broadly, I am interested in studying eary risk factors. I am particularly interested in how pregnancy complications and substance use during pregnancy may influence outcomes.
Faculty Supervisor: Daniel Kennedy, Psychological and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: My research focuses on better understanding the underlying neural differences in typical vs. atypical development, and whether these neural differences can be used as biomarkers for early identification or individualized interventions in Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Faculty Supervisor: Emily Fyfe, Pyschological and Brain Sciences and Amanda Diekman,Psychological and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: My research interests lie in the intersection of developmental psychology and education. I am interested in how the use and source of feedback affects educational outcomes such as performance, resilience, and motivation.
Faculty Supervisor: Justin Wood, Department of Informatics
Research Interests: I am particularly interested in complex network structures, specifically the emergence of intelligent behavior from neurons - in vivo and in silica. I aim to build embodied agents to this means which can model the fundamental learning properties of humans and animals. I believe that fundamental questions of intelligence and consciousness can be answered with task performing models supported with advancements in AI research. My current research focuses on the development of newborn chicks raised in virtual environments as a model learners in which all environmental variables are systematically controlled.
Research Interests: My research interests include language development along with reading comprehension in children. I also have a side interest in the social-emotional development of young children.
Research Interests: I am on the Cognitive track, and am planning to study if action or object structure drives visual gaze patterns with novel, 3-D printed objects. I will use eye tracking technology to investigate gaze patterns.
Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Indiana University (B. Bertenthal, Psychology)
Research Interests:I am interested in eye tracking and psychophysiological measures, development of emotion regulation, individual differences and social decision-making.
Current Position: Gradate Student, Indiana University (A. Diekman, Psychology)
Research Interests: My research interests are centered around gender and racial issues in education. My research focuses primarily on how how face-based traits of real and hypothetical people signal different opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). I am also interested in motivational cultures and artifacts within STEM environments that influence how individuals navigate their role.
Current Position: Graduate Student, University of Texas, Austin (C. Yu, Psychology)
Research Interests:I am interested in the interaction between learned representations and selective attention processes in the development of semantic knowledge.
Current Position: Graduate Student, Indiana University, Bloomington (R. Goldstone, Psychology)
Research Interests: My research revolves around issues in the transfer of learning. I conduct experiments to investigate different factors that promote learning transfer in humans, and develop computational models to help us better understanding the underlying processes through which transfer occurs.
Current Position: Graduate Student, University of Texas, Austin (C. Yu, Psychology)
Research Interests: My research investigates the dynamics of parent-infant interactions and how infants learn about their social world, through observations of naturalistic toy play and experimental studies that manipulate the statistics of social partner's behavior. Currently, I am studying the effects of parent speech and infant vocalizations on dyadic behavior, as well as how social contingencies impact infant attention.
Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Texas, Austin(F. Pestilli, Psychology)
Research Interests: My research focuses on understanding how the brain changes and reorganizes throughout the lifespan. I am particularly interested in how specific sensorimotor training experiences contribute to brain changes and the relationship of these brain changes to learning. I assess brain changes at both functional and structural levels using functional and diffusion MRI and I assess learning through a variety of behavioral measurements.
Current Position: Graduate Student, Indiana University, Bloomington (E. Fyfe, Psychology)
Research Interests: My research interests are rooted in child development, specifically: self-regulated learning, problem-solving, metacognition, executive functioning, motivation, help seeking, private speech, and how these skills are interrelated during early development. Ultimately, I aspire to teach, conduct related research, and continue to dissect early childhood development to provide evidence to inform the design and implementation of interventions that may positively inform what, why, and how we teach our youth in order to optimally facilitate learning during one of the most critical periods of development.
Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Indiana University, Bloomington (L. Smith, Psychology)
Research Interests: My developing research program is aimed at understanding how the autonomic nervous system shapes and guides behavior during development. Using a combination of wireless physiology sensors, motion capture, and head-mounted eye tracking, we will be able to computationally reconstruct and dissect the naturally occurring behavior of human children and their parents.
Current Position: Graduate Student, Indiana University, Bloomington (D.Kennedy, Psychology)
Research Interests: I am interested in the development of social cognitive processes in typical populations and in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and studying how individual differences in the development of joint attention and engagement within the mother-infant dyad contribute to phenotypic differences in children with and without ASD.
Current Position: Graduate Student, Indiana University, Bloomington (B. D'Onofrio, Psychology)
Research Interests: Etiology and treatment of neurodevelopmental problems (e.g. symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, seizures, and autism spectrum disorders) across multiple levels of analysis and time scales.
Current Position: Lab Manager/Project Coordinator, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Research Interests: Developmental origins of various social cognitive processes in typically developing individuals and individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Current Position: Graduate Student, Indiana University, Bloomington (E. Newman, PNS)
Research Interests: Using graph and information theoretic approaches to characterize information flow and processing in neural networks derived from effective connectivity of in vitro organotypic cultures.
Current Position: Graduate Student, Indiana University, Bloomington (J. Bates, Psychology)
Research Interests: The Roles of parent-child interactions, home environment, and sleep on self regulation, attention, school readiness, and behavioral outcomes.
Jennifer Bush
Current Position: Medical Student, Indiana University of Medicine (Further Training)
Research Interests: Social development and social impairments in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).
Branden Bryan
Current Position: Technical Problem Solver, Epic, Madison, Wisconsin
Research Topic: Pedagogical efficacy of diagrams for models in Bayesian data analysis
Linger Tian Xu
Current Position: Research Scientist, Psychology, Indiana University