Spring 2011 Brown Bag Schedule

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

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

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

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