Institute of Human Development & Change, Plasticity and Development Seminar: Fall 2012

9/17/2012    Ron Dahl

IHD Director

The Social Sculpting of Brain Development:  Implications for Health, Education, & Social Policy (and IHD)

9/24/2012    Alison Gopnik & Tom Griffiths 

Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley

Center for Computational Cognitive Development

10/8/2012    Susanne Kirsten 

Post-doctoral researcher, UC Berkeley

Theory of mind and its precursor abilities: Findings from a longitudinal study

 

10/29/2012    Jennifer Pfeifer 

Department of Psychology, University of Oregon

Self-Development:  New Insights from a Developmental  Social Cognitive Neuroscience Approach

11/5/2012    Wouter Van den Bos
Department of Psychology, Stanford University

11/12/2012   HOLIDAY

11/19/2012    Elissa Epel 

Early Life Influences on Rates of Cellular Aging: The Role of Psychological Stress and Social Context

Elissa Epel is an associate professor in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry. She is also a faculty member in the Health Psychology Postdoctoral Program, the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Postdoctoral Scholars Program. She has longstanding interests in social and
psychobiological stress mechanisms, and impact of stress physiology on food intake, insulin resistance, obesity, and premature aging at the cellular level. Her focus is on psychoneuroendocrine mediation — how stress-induced hormonal dysregulation may mediate relationships between stressor appraisal and metabolically-related outcomes (food ingestion, insulin resistance, visceral fat distribution, cell aging). Her
primary study is on family caregivers, and attempts to understand, from a psychobiological and genetic perspective, why some people are vulnerable and others are resilient to the chronic stress of caregiving. She collaborates with Drs. Elizabeth Blackburn and Jue Lin to understand how stress can affect the telomere/telomerase maintenance system. She was awarded the Neal Miller New Investigator award and an APA Health Psychology award for demonstrating novel links between stress and stress arousal with markers of cellular aging.

 

11/26/2012    Phil and Carolyn Cowan
Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley

 

12/3/2012    Dacher Keltner 
Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley

Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor
In this talk he will outline recent theorizing that he and his students have been engaged in to advance understanding of the differences in how the rich and the poor approach their social worlds. After working through conceptualizations of social class, he will then detail how social class influences basic social cognitive tendencies (e.g., the rich are less empathetic than the poor), differences in the emotional realm (the poor are more prone to emotional contagion), and differences in the moral realm (the poor behave in more altruistic and ethical fashion). He will also discuss the implications of these ideas for child development.

                   
All talks will be held in 3105 Tolman, 12:00-2:00pm

Reinout Wiers, University of Amsterdam June 22

Please join us for a talk by Reinout Wiers (Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Amsterdam) on Friday, June 22nd from 12:00-1:15 pm in Room 1111 Tolman. Prof. Wiers will address Adolescence, Addiction, and Implicit Processes: The Integration of Control and Motivation. This is the first in a series of IHD activities this year that will focus on the development of motivational processes.

ABSTRACT
Adolescence, Addiction, and Implicit Processes: The Integration of Control and Motivation
The likelihood of initiating addictive behaviors is higher during adolescence than during any other developmental period. This presentation will focus on growing evidence for the importance of implicit processes(within a dual process model) in the development of substance use disorders, and will describe promising new approaches to behavioral interventions for addiction in adolescents based on this model. The differential developmental trajectories of brain regions involved in motivation and control processes may lead to adolescents’ increased risk taking in general, which may be exacerbated by the neural consequences of drug use. Neuroimaging studies suggest that increased risk-taking behavior in adolescence is related to an imbalance between prefrontal cortical regions, associated with executive functions, and subcortical brain regions related to affect and motivation. Dual-process models of addictive behaviors are similarly concerned with difficulties in controlling abnormally strong motivational processes. Insights in the development of control and motivation may help to better understand—and more effectively intervene in—a broad range of adolescence vulnerabilities involving control and motivation relevant to a wide array of adolescent health outcomes.

Spring 2012 Seminar Series

Thursday, February 23, 4:30-6:00pm, 2515 Tolman Hall
Susan Moore Johnson, Harvard Graduate School of Education
What Factors buoy and motivate teachers in high-needs schools?
Many teachers burn-out in schools that serve high poverty students. Prof. Johnson's new study reveals how the context of everyday work advances teachers' engagement, collaboration, and relationships with students.


Tuesday, March 6, 4:30-6:00pm, 2040 Valley Life Science Building
George Loewenstein, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology at Yale University
Behavioral Economics and Incentives in Health Care
Prof. Loewenstein has worked on emotions and decision making, intertemporal choice, taste prediction, neuroeconomics and health related interventions among other areas.

Monday, March 12, 4:30-6:00pm, 5101 Tolman Hall
Larry Steinberg, Department of Psychology at Temple University
Should the Science of Adolescent Brain Development Inform Public Policy?
Prof. Steinberg will discuss whether and how brain science should inform social policies affecting adolescents with IHD member Ron Dahl as discussant.

Thursday, April 26, 4:30-6:00pm, 2515 Tolman Hall
Pam Grossman, Stanford University School of Education
From Measurement to Improvement: Leveraging Observation Protocols for Improving Teaching
While observation protocols are in the news for their use in teacher evaluation systems, there is less discussion of how to use these protocols to improve teaching quality. In her talk, Prof Grossman will discuss her new IES-funded study that is designed to leverage an observation instrument for targeted professional development.


Wednesday, May 2, 12:00-2:00pm, 2515 Tolman Hall
Cognitive Science Roundtable with Henry Wellman, Richard Aslin, Josh Tenenbaum, Noah Goodman, and Michael Frank
Probabilistic modelling approaches to development will be discussed.

Fall 2011 Seminar Schedule

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

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

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

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.