Oct. 20: Fei Xu, Department of Psychology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.