IHD Seminar Series

Spring 2012 Seminar Series

2012-01-19T08:29:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, March 6, 4:30-6:30pm
George Loewenstein, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology at Yale University
Prof. Loewenstein has worked on emotions and decision making, intertemporal choice, taste prediction, neuroeconomics and health related interventions among other areas.

Monday, March 12, 4:30-6:30pm
Larry Steinberg, Department of Psychology at Temple University
Prof. Steinberg will discuss whether and how brain science should inform social policies affecting adolescents with IHD member Silvia Bunge as discussant.

Wednesday, May 2, 12:00-2:00pm
Cognitive Science Roundtable with Henry Wellman, Richard Aslin, Josh Tenenbaum, Noah Goodman, and Michael Frank
Probabilistic modelling approaches to development will be discussed.

All events will be held in Room 1111 Tolman Hall.

Fall 2011 Seminar Schedule

2011-09-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, October 12: Alexandra Main, Audun Dahl, Eric Walle will present their research on Emotional Development

Wednesday, October 26: Dacher Keltner, Developments in Positive Psychology

Wednesday, November 2: Ron Dahl, The Feeling of Motivation in the Developing Brain: An exciting focus for interdisciplinary developmental research. Prof. Phil Cowan will be the discussant for this talk.

Wednesday, November 16: Kris Perry, Executive Director of First 5 California, Evidence Informing Policy Options: The Case of Early Childhood Development

All of these events will be held from 12:00-1:30pm in Room 1111 Tolman Hall.

April 21: Prof. Unni Wikan, University of Oslo

2011-04-11T13:33:00.000-07:00

Freedom: From the Middle East to Scandinavia--Some Thoughts on Moral and Social Development

Drawing on research over forty years in the Middle East, including a visit to Egypt after the revolution, Prof. Wikan wants to explore the concept of freedom for what it can tell about contesting voices and values in the Muslim world. Prof. Wikan will further highlight the difficult concept of freedom by drawing on a case history from Sweden that was all about liberty, but for whom, and to what end? Thus she will try to draw a line from the Middle East to the West, and back, that will illuminate some aspects of social and moral development of increasing significance in our common world.

Room 5101 Tolman Hall
12:00-1:30p.m.

Unni Wikan is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. Currently, she is a Visitor at the University of Chicago, holding the Lurcy Professorship. Professor Wikan has conducted research on cultural theory, religion, poverty and development, gender, medical anthropology, emotions, and human rights. She has done fieldwork in Egypt, Oman, Yemen, Indonesia, and Bhutan. She has also done extensive work on immigration and integration in Scandanavian countries. Among her books are: "Tomorrow God Willing: Self-made Destinities in Cairo" (1996), "Generous Betrayal: Politics of Culture in the New Europe" (2002), and "In Honor of Fadime: Murder and Shame" (2008).

April 7: Stephen Hinshaw, Department of Psychology and the Institute of Human Development

2011-03-29T12:33:00.000-07:00

Risk and Resilience in the Transition to Adolescence for Girls

Girls are largely protected from behavioral and emotional disturbance during the first decade of life, due to their strengths related to empathy, verbal skills, and compliance. Yet these same protective factors may turn into risk factors during the second decade of life, once puberty occurs, for girls with vulnerabilities (e.g., maltreatment, family history of mental illness). What are the particular vulnerabilities associated with early adolescence for girls? Which psychosocial/cultural forces propel ever-earlier and more severe risk for depression, suicide, self-harm, eating disturbances, and even aggression for teenage girls? How can a developmental perspective aid in this inquiry?

March 17: Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, Dept. of Psychology

2011-03-10T13:03:00.000-08:00

Intergroup friendship: Integrating social and developmental psychological approaches
Both social psychology and developmental psychology have seen a resurgence in research on intergroup friendship. In an effort to draw bridges between our fields, this talk will be meant to review some of the current work being done in social psychology on processes and outcomes related to intergroup friendship. Prof. Mendoza-Denton will emphasize research in the area, as well as the dominant theoretical approaches that social psychologists use to understand intergroup relations (both conflict and friendship). Prof. Mendoza-Denton will argue that social psychology, while strong on process, can benefit from a focus on antecedents, development, and context of such friendship. More broadly, the talk will touch on implications for conceptualizing person-by-environment dynamics, the interpersonal self, and interventions to ameliorate intergroup attitudes.

1111 Tolman Hall
12:00-1:30p.m.

March 10: Susan Rivera, Dept. of Psychology, UC Davis

2011-02-28T14:25:00.000-08:00

Investigating Gene-Brain Relationships Across the Lifespan in the fragile X spectrum of Disorders
Mutations of the fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) gene are the genetic cause of fragile X syndrome (FXS), the most common inherited form of mental retardation. Large expansions of the CGG trinucleotide repeat in the full mutation range (> 200 CGG repeats) consequently result in transcriptional silencing of the FMR1 gene and deficiency or absence of the FMR1 protein. Smaller expansions (~ 55 to 200 repeats)are referred to as the premutation (FXPM). My laboratory has been investigating individuals across the fragile X spectrum of involvement (including both premutation carriers and individuals with the full mutation) using both infrared eyetracking and brain imaging techniques. We have gathered data from individual across the life span, from infants to aging adults, and are converging on a consistent pattern of results which suggests that alterations in a fronto-parietal circuit may underly many of the observed cognitive deficits seen across the fragile X spectrum (especially, difficulty with spatial and numerical processing and attentive tracking). Furthermore, across these multiple studies, we have observed correlations between level of impairment on these tasks and molecular variables such as CGG repeat size and protein expression, suggesting a dosage effect of FMR1 mutations on cortical functioning in this prefrontal-parietal network.

Room 1111 Tolman Hall
12:00-1:30p.m.

Feb. 24: Geoffrey Saxe, Graduate School of Education & IHD

2011-02-16T09:09:00.000-08:00

The emergence, reproduction, and change of collective representations and ideas: The study of small communities in the New Guinea and the United States

Psychological studies of cognitive development are often conducted without regard for the interplay between the cognitive activities of individuals and the cultural histories of communities. In Prof. Saxe's talk, he illustrates a heuristic research framework that illuminates this interplay through studies drawn from his work with a remote Papua New Guinea group; He focuses on the emergence, reproduction, and alteration of collective representations for naming currency tokens in the community over an extended period of time. The second is drawn from work on mathematics in upper elementary classroom communities in the United States, where the focus is on geometric and arithmetic representations for fractions in classroom communities.

Room 1111 Tolman Hall
12:00-1:30p.m.

Feb. 10: Frank C. Worrell, Graduate School of Education

2011-02-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

Are Cultural Identities Developmental? Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Identity

Much of the early theorizing about racial identity (e.g., Cross, 1971) utilized a developmental framework, postulating change across a sequence of stages. Early theorizing about ethnic identity (e.g., Phinney, 1989) used Cross' model and Marcia's (1966) conceptualization of identity statuses to suggest developmental change. In this presnetation, the evidence in support of a developmental conceptualization of racial and ethnic identity are considered. An attitudinal perspective is suggested as an alternative hypothesis.

Jan. 27: Richard E. Nisbett, University of Michigan

2011-01-12T08:52:00.000-08:00

Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count

Many laypeople, and many scientists who study intelligence, believe that intelligence is highly heritable and for this reason is little modifiable by the environment. It is often assumed that the environment that families create for their children has little impact on intelligence. In fact, heritability is not as great as is often assumed, is very different for different groups, and poses no barrier to modification. The environment has a massive impact on intelligence. Schools have a substantial effect; the environmental differences between families are very important; IQ scores have been going up since they were first tested in the 20th century; different cultures encourage the development of intelligence to very different degrees; and interventions ranging from ambitious pre-school programs to brief interventions by school psychologists have a large impact on academic skills.

Thursday, January 27, 2011
12:00-1:30p.m.
Room 5101 Tolman Hall

Spring 2011 Brown Bag Schedule

2010-12-15T10:54:00.000-08:00

Please note that the Brown Bag meetings will be held on Thursdays, 12-2p.m. in Room 1111 Tolman Hall unless otherwise noted.

January 27: Richard Nisbett, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan
Will be held in 5101 Tolman Hall

February 10: Frank C. Worrell, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley

February 24: Geoff Saxe, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley

March 10: Susan Rivera, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis

March 17: Rudy Mendoza-Denton, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

April 7: Steve Hinshaw, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

April 21: Unni Wikan, Social Anthropology, University of Oslo

Dec. 1: Andrew Fuligni, UCLA

2010-11-15T08:40:00.001-08:00

Family Obligation and Assistance during Adolescence

Despite being normative for most families around the world, the role that adolescents play in providing instrumental support to their families has been rarely studied. In this talk, Dr. Fuligni presents a program of research that has focused on nature and the developmental implications of family obligation and assistance among adolescents from Latin American, Asian, and European backgrounds. Using data from longitudinal studies involving questionnaires, qualitative interviews, daily diary checklists, biomarkers of health, and neuroimaging, Dr. Fuligni highlights how family obligation and assistance (a)are strong among adolescents from Latin American and Asian backgrounds and remain strong across several generations, (b)create both developmental oportunities and challenges for adolescents, and (c)provide adolescents with a sense of meaning and purpose as they confront the challenges of becoming adults in American society.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010
12:00-1:30p.m.
Room 1111 Tolman Hall

Nov. 10: Melanie Killen, University of Maryland

2010-11-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

Morality and Intergroup Attitudes: Developmental Origins of Prejudice

Professor Melanie Killen is the Associate Director of the Center for Children, Relationships, and Culture at the University of Maryland. Her research has focused on the development of social and moral reasoning, with an emphasis on judgements about social exclusion, intergroup bias, and prejudice in childhood.

Oct. 20: Fei Xu, Department of Psychology

2010-10-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

Learning from sparse data: Statistical inference in infants and children

Much of developmental research on infants and young children has focused on either how much innate knowledge infants have or how infants learn by keeping track of input statistics from their environment. Recent research aims to break this impasse between innate knowledge and learning by focusing on how children make principled generalizations based on limited amounts of data. Prof. Xu will describe a number of recent studies on probabilistic reasoning, social cognition, and language to illustrate that infants and young children have several powerful inductive learning mechanisms that allow for rapid acquisition of knowledge in various domains.

Fall 2010 Brown Bag Schedule

2010-10-08T10:33:00.001-07:00

October 6:
Ron Dahl, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley

October 20:
Fei Xu, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

November 10:
Melanie Killen: Department of Human Development, University of Maryland

December 1: Andrew Fuligni, School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles

Brown Bag Meetings are held on Wednesdays, 12-1:30p.m. in Room 1111 Tolman Hall

Oct. 6, 2010: Ron Dahl, School of Public Health

2010-09-22T15:23:00.001-07:00

Professor Dahl has recently joined the UC Berkeley faculty in the School of Public Health and is now a member of the IHD. Please join us to hear about his research on Adolescent Brain Development: A Window into Unique Vulnerabilities and Opportunities.

The IHD Brown Bag meetings are held in Room 1111 Tolman Hall.

Please note the change in day and time: Wednesdays from 12:00 Noon to 1:30p.m.

April 29: Laura Sterponi, Graduate School of Education

2010-04-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

Rethinking Echolalia: Repetition as Interactional Resource in the Communication of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Echolalia, that is the repetition of the speech of others, often constitutes the bulk of the early speech of those children with autism who develop language. Autism echolalia has traditionally been conceived of as an automatic, pre-reflexive behavior that bears no or minimal communicative function and compromises intersubjectivity. In line with recent naturalistic studies, Prof. Sterponi explores the functional role of echolalic behavior in the communication of and with affected children. Through an integrated methodology, which combines linguistic, discourse and acoustic analyses, Prof. Sterponi demonstrates that (1)immediate echoes are not automatic responses devoid of meaning but rather they accomplish a range of interactional goals; (2)delayed echoes are employed systematically and productively to mark different epistemic and affective stances; and
(3)adult-child verbal interaction unfolds according to discernible formats, which are distinctly conducive to functional uses of echoes.

Thursday, April 29, 2010
12:30-2:00p.m.
1111 Tolman Hall

April 15: Margaret Bridges, Institute of Human Development

2010-04-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

Watching Scooby Doo and Making Tortillas: The Daily Activities of Mexican-American Preschool Children

In response to Social and Ecocultural theories about why some young children of color lag behind their peers in school, Dr. Bridges will present her research on the everyday activities of 25 young Mexican-American children. Specifically, she will report on the six most frequently observed activities in terms of their reproduction of heritage culture, language, symbols, and knowledge; their cognitive demands; and how they varied across families. She will use these findings to explain, in part, why some Latino children may differentially engage in the activity structures present in U.S. classrooms.

April 1: Susan Stone, School of Social Welfare

2010-03-12T16:20:00.000-08:00

School-level psycho-social supports and achievement: Evidence from the San Francisco Unified School District

The aims of Prof. Stone's talk are threefold. First she will discuss scholarly concerns, emerging from both social work and psychology literatures, raised about the nature and quality of psycho-social service provision in schools. She will argue that these concerns dovetail with findings generated from educational research on essential school reform processes and "improved" school finance (see Grubb, 2008). Second, Prof. Stone will characterize the mismatch between the accumulating body of school based "empirically supported treatments" and actual practices. Finally, she will present on data generated from San Francisco Unified School District's "Learning Support Professional" program, which was initially implemented in the 2001-2002 school year. This program was unique in that it encouraged "school reform minded" psycho-social service provision. Given that the program was rolled into schools over several years and that data on services were collected over time, these data provide an opportunity to explore the association between the school-based psycho-social service provision and overall performance trends. Findings suggest that the presence of this program is positively (albeit modestly) associated with school achievement, controlling for plausible confounds. There is also evidence that particular combinations of service strategies show additional, positive relationships with school achievement.

March 11: Susan Holloway

2010-03-03T10:28:00.000-08:00

Women and Family in Contemporary Japan: Ideology, experience and agency

Japanese women have often been singled out for their strong commitment to the role of housewife and mother. But they are now postponing marriage and bearing fewer children, and Japan has become one of the least fertile and fastest aging countries in the world. To explore this phenomenon, I will report on a mixed method, longitudinal study excamining Japanese mothers' perspectives and experiences of marriage, parenting, and family life. My analysis will focus on how these women interpret and respond to the barriers and opportunities afforded within the structural and ideological contexts of contemporary Japan.

February 25, 2010: Emily Ozer

2010-02-18T12:57:00.000-08:00

Studying the Effects of Youth-Led Participatory Research on Students and Schools: Preliminary Results and Mixed Methods Approaches

Youth-led participatory research is a form of "action research" (Lewin, 1947) that is increasingly being implemented in the youth development, education, public health and community psychology fields. In this approach, students are trained to identify major concerns in their schools and communities, conduct research to understand the nature of the problems, and take leadership in influencing policies and decisions to enhance the conditions in which they and their peers live. While promising, it has been subjected to relatively little systematic study and evaluation regarding its potential impact on young people's development and on their schools as settings that support positive youth development. In this talk, I will present preliminary process and outcome findings from a longitudinal experimental evaluation of a youth-led participatory research program conducted in several SF public high schools for the past 4 years. This project entails the integration of extensive observational and interview data on the quality of implementation of the school-based intervention with self-report and district data regarding youth outcomes. My presentation will highlight the strategies used and challenges encountered in this multi-method study, and invite feedback from participants regarding the analytic decisions involved in the quantitative and qualitative components of this research.

Feburary 11, 2010: Anne Fernald

2010-02-01T11:52:00.000-08:00

Early experience with language really matters: Links between maternal talk, processing efficiency, and vocabulary growth among diverse children.

Research on the early development of cognition and language has focused primarily on infants from middle-class families, excluding less advantaged children. But we know that SES differences are strongly associated with the quantity and quality of early cognitive stimulation available to infants. Longitudinal research on the development of fluency in language reveals relations between processing speed in infancy and longterm outcomes for both high-SES English-learning children and low-SES Spanish-learning children. But by 18 months, we find that low-SES children are already substantially slower in processing speed as well as vocabulary growth. It turns out that differences in early experience with language contribute to variability observed in children's efficiency in real-time processing. Within low-SES families, those children whose mothers talked with them more learned vocabulary more quickly; they also made more rapid gains in processing speed. By examining variability both within and between groups of children who differ in early experience with language, we gain insight into common developmental trajectories of lexical growth in relation to greater processing efficiency, and discover environmental factors that enable some children to progress more rapidly than others.

January 28, 2010: Anne Cunningham

2010-01-19T09:39:00.000-08:00

Teacher Study Groups: Professional Development in Early Literacy for Preschool Teachers

Given the significance of establishing strong foundations in early
literacy in preschool children, there is a need for effective sustainable
professional development to assist preschool teachers in providing early
literacy support in their classrooms. The goal of our project, a three
year Institute of Education Sciences funded study, Teacher Quality: The
Role of Teacher Study Groups as a Model of Professional Development in
Early Literacy for Preschool Teachers, is to investigate the factors that
will contribute to effective professional development for preschool
teachers in language and literacy. In this presentation, we will describe
our model of PD employing Teacher Study Groups (TSG) .
The TSG professional development model is guided by an emphasis on content focus, coherence, duration/intensity and collective participation. The TSG will provide opportunities for teachers to have interactive, reflective, and context-sensitive conversations to foster their knowledge, beliefs, and practices in ways aligned with research-based early literacy development and instruction. This presentation will frame the study in historical and current research in the field of early literacy as well as provide an in-depth look into the inner workings of the TSG.

Spring 2010 Brown Bag Series

2010-01-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

The speaker series for the Brown Bag Meetings this Spring are as follows:

Jan. 28 Anne Cunningham
February 11 Anne Fernald
February 25 Emily Ozer
March 11 Susan Holloway
April 1 Susan Stone
April 15 Margaret Bridges
April 29 Laura Sterponi

The meetings are held at 12:30-2:00p.m. in Room 1111 Tolman Hall.

Please check back for possible changes to the schedule and more information about each of the talks.

December 3, 2009: Alison Gopnik

2009-11-25T08:01:00.000-08:00

The statistical social learner: Using causal inference to learn about action sequences and personality traits.

Recent work shows that children can infer causal structure from statistical data. We will describe two different ways that this kind of statistical causal learning can help children learn about other people. In the first series of studies, we explore how children learn about how to segment and interpret goal-directed action sequences, and how this shapes their imitation and observational learning.

In the second series of studies we showed 4 and 6 year old children different patterns of covariation between actions and either individual people or situations. 4-year-olds inferred that the actions were caused by an enduring trait of the person or by the external situation depending on covariance. 6-year-olds were also sensitive to covariation evidence but they had developed a consistent prior bias towards person explanations.

These findings suggest that statistically based causal inference may be responsible for the development of social knowledge. In combination, these studies show that children use statistical causal learning to make important inferences about other people – inferences that shape their social experience.

Neil Gilbert, November 19

2009-11-12T10:45:00.000-08:00

Neil Gilbert, Professor of Social Welfare and Co-Director of the Center for Child and Youth Policy will present: "A Mother's Work: Capitalism, Feminism and the Welfare State"

In 2002 nearly one in five women in their early forties were childless inthe U.S. , which was close to double the proportion of childless women in1976. In addition to having fewer children mother's were increasinglyoutsourcing household production and the daily care of their preschoolers toother people. Why had so many women chosen this course, particularly whenthere is a fair amount of evidence that shows these outcomes do not coincidewith their ideals of family life? Analyzing the choices women are making inthe modern-day struggle to combine work and family life, A Mother's Workseeks to understand the social dynamics governing these choices, to clarifywhose interests are being served in the process, and to explore alternativesocial policies that address efforts to harmonize work and family life.

November 5-Bob Levenson

2009-10-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

Professor Bob Levenson, Department of Psychology, will present: See me, feel me, heal me: Empathy in "normal" adult development and dementia, at our next Brown Bag Meeting.

October 8: Larry Nucci "It's a part of life to do what you want: The personal domain and the child's sense of autonomy and personal identity"

2009-09-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, October 8, 2009, our Brown Bag speaker is Larry Nucci of IHD. The title of his presentation is: "It's a part of life to do what you want: The personal domain and the child's sense of autonomy and personal identity." Larry's talk is part of our efforts to further the theme of Social and Emotional Development, but also bears on the theme of Contexts and Development. He will be describing some cross-cultural studies as well as child-parent interactions and children's resistance relevant to family contexts - especially with connections to reasons as to why parental negotiation and discourse is "healthy." He will also make some links to issues of mental health.

Fall 2009 Brown Bag Series

2009-09-17T16:17:00.001-07:00

The speaker series for the Brown Bag Meetings this Fall are as follows:

October, 8: Larry Nucci
October 22: Sean Reardon
November 5: Bob Levenson
November 19: Neil Gilbert
December 3: Alison Gopnik

Please note the change in days to Thursdays. The meetings are held at 12:30-2:00p.m. in Room 1111 Tolman Hall.

More information about the talks will be posted later.

IHD Seminar Series has Launched!

2009-05-06T17:26:00.001-07:00

Check back here soon!