Institute of Human Development & Change, Plasticity and Development Seminar, Fall 2013

9/16 Linda Wilbrecht
Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley

9/23 Emily Ozer
School of Public Health, UC Berkeley

10/21 Alexandra Minnis
Senior Research Epidemiologist, Women's Global Health Imperative, RTI International

10/28 Jenny Saffran
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

11/4 Laurie Paul
Philosophy Department, UNC Chapel Hill

11/18 Mahesh Srinivasan
Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley

11/25 Ndola Prata
Associate Professor in Residence, SPH

12/2 Danny Pine
Chief of Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience, National Institute of Mental Health

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

Sept. 23: Emily Ozer, Promoting Adolescent Health and Beyond: Research on Improving School Settings and Empowerment.

Promoting Adolescent Health and Beyond: Research on Improving School Settings and Empowerment

Abstract:
My scholarship is informed by an ecological perspective that emphasizes the importance of social contexts on human development and the mutual influence of a range of individual and setting-level factors in shaping mental health and disorder. My research entails (a) the systematic examination of interventions designed to promote psychological and economic empowerment among marginalized populations; and (b) investigating and promoting factors that promote positive adaptation and mental health despite the presence of significant stressors. This latter line of research seeks to identify the conditions and resources that help protect individuals from psychopathology and other adverse consequences despite the presence of risk. I have substantially expanded my initial work on stress and child development beyond violence to study more broadly the effects of economic conditions, economic policies, and social class on the mental health of children and adolescents.

In my presentation, I will present findings from two local studies conducted in urban public schools, focusing primarily on a recent longitudinal intervention study of youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) for ethnically-diverse high school students. YPAR is an intervention approach in which young people are trained as researchers to identify and study problems to be addressed in their schools or communities and to conduct actions to advocate for changes based on their research findings. I will also discuss new directions for my intervention research and motivations for promoting interdisciplinary collaborations at the new I4Y Center at the Institute for Human Development.

Please join us on Monday, September 23, 12:00-1:30pm in 3105 Tolman Hall

Sept. 16: Linda Wilbrecht, The brain's topiary art: Development, experience and structural plasticity of synaptic structures in the neocortex

The brain's topiary art: Development, experience and structural plasticity of synaptic structures in the neocortex

Prof. Wilbrecht will discuss the concept of adolescent brain development as a process of synaptic stabilization rather than simple pruning, showing evidence that there is both dendritic spine gain and loss in the frontal cortex across adolescent development in mice. She will then focus on the potential relationship between learning and spine gain and stabilization using her recent study of the impact of cocaine exposure on learning and new spine growth.

3105 Tolman Hall, 12:00-1:30pm

May 13: Jennifer Arter, "You can pick your friends..." An evolutionary framework for human friendship

Jennifer Arter, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Psychology, will present her research: Abstract: Many species employ conditional strategies for reproduction or survival. In other words, each individual “chooses” one of several possible phenotypes in order to maximize survival or reproductive advantage given the specific ecological niche (e.g., Moran, 1992). Can conditional strategies explain individual variation in humans’ selection of their friends? Evidence suggests that individuals are sensitive to characteristics of the self, friend, and environmental conditions when choosing friends (Fehr, 1996; Rose, 1985; Verbrugge, 1977), and that a person’s economic, social, and environmental circumstances influence how they form and organize their friendships (Adams & Allan, 1998; Feld & Carter, 1998). In this dissertation I hypothesized that humans have evolved a definable range of conditional friendship strategies, and that an individual’s strategy will relate to her traits and to features of her social and non-social environment. I also hypothesized that individuals would be able to perceive and detect reliable signals (Cronk, 2005; Searcy & Nowicki, 2005; Smith, 1994) of these strategies in others, enabling them to choose friends whose traits are most desirable to them. Results partly supported these hypotheses; individuals do seem to have a reliable range of friendship preferences which relate to their own traits, and they do seem able to pick up on others’ signals of these strategies, but it is not clear whether preferences for others’ signals are more global or vary more by individual. The studies in this dissertation propose and begin to test a novel theoretical framework for studying human friendship, and they suggest avenues for future work that should capitalize on the framework of evolutionary social psychology described here. 3105 Tolman Hall 12:00-1:30pm

May 6: Development on the Streets: Research with Homeless Children and Youth in San Francisco, CA & Kisumu, Kenya

Colette Auerswald, MD, MS, is an Associate Professor at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine and the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. She is a pediatrician specialized in adolescent medicine and principal investigator of the Youth in Social Environments Group (Y-SE). She has been engaged in community-based research regarding the health of homeless youth in San Francisco for sixteen years. Her research interests include the study of the contribution of cultural and social factors to HIV and STD-related behaviors in marginalized youth populations (including homeless youth, low-income youth of color, and LGBTQ youth in San Francisco, and street children in East Africa); the sampling of hard-to-reach populations; the role of social networks in adolescent health; and the use of mixed qualitative and quantitative methods in adolescent health research. She is currently interested in the role of stigma in the lived of marginalized youth and developing structural interventions to address stigma in their lives.

April 29: Alison Miller, University of Michigan

Stress, Self-Regulation, Eating Behavior and Obesity in Low-Income Children

Alison Miller is a developmental psychologist who studies child self-regulation, family processes, and social-contextual factors in relation to child health and mental health outcomes.  Obesity is a complex condition influenced by biological, psychological, behavioral and social-contextual factors, many of which can be established and identified early in the lifespan.  Recent attention has focused on the need for developmental science to inform the study of childhood obesity.  Importantly, income-related disparities in obesity are identifiable even in early childhood.
This presentation will focus on stress, self-regulation, and "stress-eating" behaviors as potential pathways to obesity and excessive weight gain among young, low-income children.  Specifically, the design and methods for the "Appetite, Behavior, and Cortisol (ABC)" studies will be introduced and initial findings presented regarding how child stress response relates to eating behavior and obesity in early childhood.  Implications for intervention work will also be considered.

April 15: Alison Miller Singley & Zi Lin Sim

Please join us for two presentations by Alison Miller Singley and  Zi Lin Sim, graduate students in the Department of Psychology.  Each will discuss their current research on Monday, April 15,  12:00-1:30pm in 3105 Tolman Hall. Alison Miller Singley: "Work Hard, Play Harder? How Games May Improve Academic  Achievement" Abstract: Reasoning is not only an important life skill,  it is also essential  for proficiency in mathematics, which has become a gatekeeper  for academic and professional success. Previous research has  shown that children can improve their reasoning skills through  game-playing. In my current project, I seek to determine  whether instruction in chess, a reasoning-intensive game, can be similarly beneficial for elementary school children, particularly  as it relates to reasoning, mathematics and cognitive capacity. Zi Lin Sim: "Infant's Early Understanding of Coincidence" Abstract "Coincidences are surprising events that can provide learners with the opportunity to revise their theories about how the world works. In the current research, we investigate whether infants are truly  sensitive to coincidences, even when such surprising events cannot be predicted by the computation of mere probabilities. In addition, we explore whether this sensitivity is translated into action,  encouraging infants to engage inactivities that may enable them to  revise their theories. Results from 2 experiments demonstrate that infants display a sensitivity to coincidence similar to adult intuitions,  and they selectively explore objects that produce anomalous data  that better supports an alternative theory than their prior theory."