Institute of Human Development & Change, Plasticity, and Development Seminar, Spring 2015

Feb.2- Nim Tottenham, Professor of Psychology
           Columbia University
           Human Amygdala-Prefrontal Cortex Development and the Role of  
           Caregiving



Feb.9-  Tamar Kushnir, Professor of Human Development
            Cornell University
            Meeting in the middle: acting and learning in social
            environments



Feb. 23- Mark Seidenberg, Professor of Psychology
               University of Wisconsin, Madison
           



March 9-  Candice Odgers, Professor of Public Policy, Psychology & Neuroscience  Duke University



March 16- Shaun O'Grady & Katie Kimura, Graduate Students
                  UCB Department of Psychology



April 6-  Michael Lewis, Professor Pediatrics & Psychiatry
                Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
                The Rise of Consciousness and the Development of
               Emotional Life



April 13-  Adrienne Wente & Ruthe Foushee, Graduate Students
                 UCB Department of Psychology



April 20-  Minxuan He, Graduate Student
                UCB Department of Psychology



April 27-  Caren Walker, Graduate Student
                UCB Department of Psychology



May 4-  Andrea Urqueta, Graduate Student
             UCB Department of Psychology

All talks will be held in 3105 Tolman, 12:00-1:30pm.

Dec. 1: Fumiko Hoeft, "Parenting Influences on Developmental Processes: Insights from Intergerational Imaging of Human Brain Networks"

Parenting Influences on Developmental Processes:  Insights from Intergenerational Imaging of Human Brain Networks      

Parents have large influences on their offspring's development in complex ways that include genetic and pre-, peri- and post-natal environmental influences, as well as interactions across these levels of influence on a variety of developmental processes. My lab is taking an innovative approach to investigating some aspects of these complexities through intergenerational neuroimaging.  The intergenerational multiple deficit model affords integration of these influences as well as others, whether parental or non-parental, genetic or environmental, and risk or protective, to explain individual variability in complex traits.  Further, it has recently been suggested that most complex traits show intergenerational sex-specific transmission patterns.  Because macrocircuits include heterogeneous components with complex interaction among components, they may be ideal targets for investigations, where key factors/causes may converge in ways that lead to complex phenotypes.

My talk will center around these notions, and I will discuss our current research examining how parental cognitive and neuroimaging patterns are associated with offspring's complex traits and related imaging patterns, taking reading (dis)ability as an example.  We first establish the feasibility of this novel approach, intergenerational imaging, by confirming maternal transmission patterns in the cortico-limbic system related to emotion regulation, something that is well established in gene expression and behavioral studies of animals and humans. We then interrogate network patterns related to reading, and show strong intergenerational transmission patterns. We discuss these preliminary findings in light of historical etiological theories of reading disability (dyslexia; e.g. testosterone theory).  We also introduce our new research program that will allow us to dissociate prenatal influence from genetic and postnatal influence, which has traditionally not been feasible in humans, but is critically important in dissecting the neurobiological mechanisms underlying complex traits.

 

This talk will be held in 3105 Tolman Hall, 12:00-1:30pm. 

Nov. 17: Larry Nucci, "Integrating Moral Development Within the Teaching of History in Urban Schools"

Integrating Moral Development Within the Teaching of History in Urban Schools

 

This talk will describe a successful effort to apply developmental principles to promote moral development within the teaching of the regular social studies curriculum in Oakland public middle schools.  The talk will conclude with a discussion of current efforts to extend this work throughout the district, and to integrate this approach with the district efforts to promote civic engagement at the high school level.  Our approach enabled teachers to differentially address students’ understandings of societal conventions and social systems, and their moral reasoning.  Teachers reduced their reliance on didactic instruction, and promoted students’ engagement in transactive forms of discourse within peer and whole class discussions.  Students’ transactive discussion was in turn associated with the increases in students’ moral growth and their spontaneous coordination of moral and conventional elements in multi-faceted contexts.  Student engagement within their academic learning increased along with their perceptions of the amount of history learned.  Teachers reported increased levels of student engagement, and enthusiastically endorsed the approach taken in this project. 

This talk will be held from 12:00-1:30pm in 3105 Tolman Hall.

Sept. 22: Alison Miller Singley, "Relational Reasoning: Potential Implications for Mathematics Pedagogy"

Relational Reasoning: Potential Implications for Mathematics Pedagogy


The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics encourage reasoning about the relationships between math concepts. Relational reasoning is a skill that children develop and use spontaneously in non-mathematical contexts, but rarely do in math class. In particular, fractions and algebra are two major stumbling blocks for students, and both are highly relational in nature. Would engaging students' relational reasoning abilities help them to learn fractions and algebra? In this talk I'll discuss several ways in which I've approached this question and sketch out my plans for dissertation research.


This talk will be held in 3105 Tolman Hall, 12:00-1:30pm.

Sept. 29: Kathryn Paige Harden, "Sensation Seeking and the Development of Externalizing Behaviors during Adolescence"

Sensation Seeking and the Development of Externalizing Behaviors during Adolescence

K. Paige Harden

University of Texas at Austin

Department of Psychology

Population Research Center

www.labs.la.utexas.edu/harden/

Externalizing behaviors, including substance use and delinquency, escalate during adolescence and are leading contributors to mortality and morbidity in this age group. This presentation will describe research on sensation seeking and its role in driving adolescent increases in externalizing. First, I will describe a series of studies on age-related changes in sensation seeking and impulse control. Results from nationally-representative samples show that (a) average levels of sensation seeking increase markedly from childhood to mid-adolescence, (b) sensation seeking peaks earlier and declines more rapidly for females than males, (c) changes in sensation seeking are largely independent from changes in impulse control, and (d) individual differences in sensation seeking change are under strong genetic control, and (e) adolescents who show more rapid increases in sensation seeking also show the most rapid escalation in delinquent behavior. Part 2 will describe results from a behavioral genetic study of twins from the Texas Twin Project (Harden, Tucker-Drob, & Tackett, 2013). Factor analytic results indicate that self-reports of sensation seeking map to some – but not all – laboratory tasks designed to assess risk-taking or reward seeking, but there is substantial task-specific variance in individual tests. Studies of sensation seeking should use a multivariate measurement battery that can isolate theoretically distinct constructs (i.e., sensation seeking from impulsivity from cognitive ability). Finally, Part 3 will present hypotheses and preliminary data regarding the influence of testosterone and other pubertal hormones on the development of sensation seeking, including evidence for possible testosterone × cortisol interactions.

Institute of Human Development & Change, Plasticity and Development Seminar, Fall 2014

All talks will be held in 3105 Tolman Hall, 12:15-1:30pm.

Sept. 22- Alison Miller Singley, Graduate Student
       UCB Department of Psychology

Sept. 29- Kathryn Paige Harden, Assistant Professor of Psychology
                University of Texas, Austin

Oct. 13- Kristen Hawkes, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology
               University of Utah

Oct. 20- Nicholas Allen, Professor of Clinical Psychology
               University of Oregon

Oct. 27- Zi Lin Sim, Graduate Student
       UCB Department of Psychology

Nov. 3- Christoph Konieczny, Graduate Student of Psychology
             Heidelberg University

Nov. 10-Tamar Kushnir, Assistant Professor of Child Development
               Department of Human Development, Cornell University

Nov. 17- Larry Nucci, Professor UCB Graduate School of Education

Dec. 1-Fumiko Hoeft, Associate Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry & Director of Laboratory for Educational Neuroscience (LENS)
UCSF Department of Psychiatry

April 28: Jane Hu, "Learning from others using social and statistical cues"

Learning from others using social and statistical cues

How do children come to possess the knowledge necessary to progress into adulthood? With relatively few life experiences, children must look to other people for information about the world. In this talk, I'll discuss several studies that demonstrate children's rich ability to learn from and about others by observing their actions and paying attention to contextual cues surrounding new information. Specifically, I'll show that children can infer others' preferences from watching their choices, and consider consensus opinions and informants’ knowledge when learning new information from others.

This talk will be held in 3105 Tolman Hall, 12:00-1:30pm.

April 14: Audun Dahl, "Early Moral Development in Social Interactions"

Early Moral Development in Social Interactions

Morality is about how we treat other people, and it develops, to a large extent, through social interactions. In its fully developed form, morality involves a concern for the well-being of others and an ability to coordinate moral and non-moral concerns. Although infants appear sensitive to some moral norms by their first birthday, they do not reliably act out of concern for the well-being of others. For instance, they harm others without provocation and they help others at substantially lower rates than older children, if at all. Over the course of the second year of life, this changes dramatically. In this talk, Audun will discuss evidence for how distinct forms of social interactions in the second year contribute to two fundamental aspects of moral development: the aversion to interpersonal harm and the tendency to help others. His research combines naturalistic and experimental methods to show that (1) caregivers are generally more insistent and more angry when intervening on infants' moral (harmful) transgressions than on other transgressions, (2) caregivers facilitate infants' helping behavior at ages earlier than often assumed, and (3) infants make use of these social signals in deciding what to do (help) and not to do (harm).

This talk will be held in 3105 Tolman Hall, 12:00-1:30pm

April 7: Douglas Jutte, "Exploring the Intersection of Community Development and Healthy (Child) Development"

Exploring the Intersection of Community Development and Healthy (Child) Development

There is growing interest in the social determinants of healthy child development, and more specifically, in understanding the ways that low-income social environments can have a negative impact on child development. This presentation by Douglas Jutte will describe an exciting research initiative to examine efforts to improve low-income neighborhoods and their effects on the health and well being of children and families. Douglas Jutte is a developmental pediatrician who has recently received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to add health and development measures to a large community development project. He will describe the history and function of the national non-profit community development sector and discuss how the $150 Billion (yes, Billion) invested annually into low-income neighborhoods has the potential to have a positive impact on understanding--and improving--important social determinants of child and family health and well-being. Achieving these goals will require partnering between the national non-profit community and researchers with expertise in child development and public health to more effectively understand how improvements in low-income neighborhoods can have a positive effect on the social determinants of healthy development.

Douglas Jutte, MD, MPH is a professor and population health researcher at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. He teaches in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program and serves as associate director of the master’s degree in Health & Medical Sciences. He has been a leader in the Federal Reserve & Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Healthy Communities Initiative that aims to increase the positive impact of community development and public health by better integrating the work of these two sectors, and he will soon be Executive Director of the newly formed National Partnership for Community Development & Health. His research focuses on the impact of social determinants of health on children’s wellbeing over the life course as well as the policy levers and financial tools that can intervene to protect children and families. He has published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Epidemiology, Academic Pediatrics, the American Journal of Public Health and Health Affairs. Dr. Jutte graduated from Cornell University and received his MD from Harvard Medical School and a master’s degree in public health from UC Berkeley. His post-doctoral research training in population health was through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health & Society Scholars program based at UCSF. He completed his pediatric training at Stanford University and continues to care for at-risk newborns as a neonatal hospitalist.

This talk will be held in 3105 Tolman Hall, 12:00-1:30pm.

March 31: Nathan Fox, "Are There Sensitive Periods for the Effects of Early Experience on Cognitive and Social Competence? Lessons from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project"

Are There Sensitive Periods for the Effects of Early Experience on Cognitive and Social Competence? Lessons from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project

Dr. Nathan Fox, University of Maryland
Director of the Child Development Lab in the Dept. of Human Development

Distinguished University Professor

Interim Chair, Dept. of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology

Abstract

Developmental psychologists and educators assume that early experiences shape the brain and neural circuitry for emerging cognitive and social behaviors over the first years of life. Most of the evidence for these assumptions is based on rodent and non human primate animal research. Far less has been published on the effects of early experience that is not correlational in nature. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) is the first randomized trial of a family intervention for children who experienced significant psychosocial neglect early in their lives. A group of infants living in institutions in Romania were recruited and randomized to be taken out of the institution and placed into family/foster care homes or to remain in the institution. Follow up of these children occurred at 42 and 54 months of age and at 8 years of age. Multiple domains, including cognitive, socio-emotional, psychiatric, and brain imaging were assessed at each age. Three questions are posed in this study and this talk: first, are there lasting effects of early psychosocial deprivation as children develop over the school years. Second, is intervention successful in ameliorating deficits as a result of institutionalization. And third, are there sensitive periods in delivering the intervention that explain both success and failure to improve cognitive and socio-emotional behavior.

This talk will be held in 3105 Tolman Hall, 12:00-1:30pm.

March 17: Sally Ozonoff, "Advances in Early Detection Science: Finding Infant Markers of Autism"

Advances in Early Detection Science: Finding Infant Markers of Autism

Sally Oznoff
Endowed Professor and Vice Chair for Research
Department of Psychiatry and Behavior Sciences
M.I.N.D. Institute
Davis Medical Center

Abstract:
This talk will focus on early detection of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in infants and young toddlers, summarizing existing research and describing new results from an ongoing prospective study. Developmental challenges beyond ASD that may occur in siblings will also be discussed. The talk will conclude with recurrence risk of ASD in families who already have an affected child and implications for screening and working with families.

Monday, March 17 in 3105 Tolman Hall, 12:00-1:30pm.

March 10: Kris Madsen, "Curbing Childhood Obesity: A Systems Approach"

Kristine A. Madsen, MD, MPH is faculty member in the School of Public Health, in the Division of Community Health and Child Development, who is an expert in the development and treatment of pediatric obesity. She is a pediatrician and research scientist with expertise in the design and evaluation of interventions related to childhood obesity and health disparities in youth. She has collaborated with multiple Departments of Public Health, school districts, healthcare organizations, and other community agencies to design interventions to prevent and treat childhood obesity. Her current work includes: an NIH-funded randomized trial looking at school-based body-mass index screening and reporting; a longitudinal study of the impact of Kaiser's new Thriving Schools initiative; a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project examining the impact of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation's Healthy Schools Program; and a partnership with Contra Costa Health Services to disseminate their evidence-based Familias Activas y Saludables program.

Curbing Childhood Obesity: A Systems Approach

Abstract: Childhood obesity remains the number one pediatric public health problem in the US, and disparities by race/ethnicity and income are increasing. Emerging evidence suggests that cross-system integration and collaboration will be critical to address the problem of obesity. Dr. Madsen will discuss several research projects aimed at changing systems and environments to reduce obesity, including health care, schools, neighbourhoods and media.

This talk will be held in 3105 Tolman on Monday, March 10 from 12:00-1:30pm.

Feb. 24: Sytske Besemer, "Children of criminal and incarcerated parents: do they commit more crime?"

Children of criminal and incarcerated parents: do they commit more crime?

Sytske Besemer, IHD Post-Doctoral Scholar & Rubicon Fellow

In my book ‘Intergenerational transmission of criminal and violent behaviour’ I review evidence for different mechanisms that might explain why children with criminal parents have a higher risk of committing crime. This work raises some compelling developmental questions: What exactly happens when children grow up in a criminogenic environment – how exactly does this impact their development? Is there some kind of ‘criminal’ social learning taking place? Does a disadvantaged environment impact their development in specific ways? What is the impact of criminal justice sanctions on these children’s development?
During my talk I will discuss some of these questions and the possible mechanisms and will focus on one issue that has emerged as particularly salient: parental incarceration. Specifically, I will discuss our research on whether it matters in which country you grow up and where your parents have been incarcerated to examine the question: do more punitive countries perhaps enhance the intergenerational transmission of crime? This is a vital issue, especially in the US, where 1% of the population is currently incarcerated.
Here is a link to Sytske's book:Intergenerational transmission of criminal and violent behaviour

This talk will be held in 3105 Tolman on Monday, Feb. 24 from 12:00-1:30pm.

Institute of Human Development & Change, Plasticity and Development Seminar, Spring 2014

2/24 Sytske Besemer
Post-doctoral scholar, UC Berkeley & Rubicon Fellow

3/3 Paul Harris
Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education, Harvard
CANCELLED

3/10 Kris Madsen
Assistant Professor, UCB-UCSF Joint Medical Program & Public Health Nutrition

3/17 Sally Ozonoff
Professor-in-Residence & Vice Chair for Research, UC Davis

3/31 Nathan Fox
Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland

4/7 Douglas P. Jutte
Associate Director, UCB-UCSF Joint Medical Program

4/14 Audun Dahl
Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley

4/28 Jane Hu
Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley

All talks will be held in 3105 Tolman Hall, 12:00-1:30pm