Department of Psychology

Developmental Program Core Faculty

Sheri Berenbaum, Ph.D., 1977, University of California, Berkeley
Sheri Berenbaum is interested in social and cognitive development, primarily from a neuroscience perspective. Current work focuses on prenatal sex hormone effects on gender development, genetic influences on pubertal development and on the association between pubertal timing and behavior, and the neural substrates of individual differences in cognitive abilities. A goal is to understand the ways in which biological predispositions and the childhood social environment work together to produce individual differences in social behavior and cognition.

Kristin A. Buss, Ph.D., 2000, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Kristin Buss is interested in emotional development and temperamental variation from birth through early childhood. Her work spans multiple areas of research within social development, psychobiology, and neuroscience. Her current work is focused on the development of risk for adjustment problems, such as anxiety symptoms in toddlers with fearful temperaments. This work has demonstrated significant effects for types of situations where children show fear as well as their physiological stress reactivity.

Rick O. Gilmore, Ph.D., 1997, Carnegie Mellon University
Rick Gilmore's research asks three questions: What are the representations underlying spatial perception and action? How are these representations instantiated in the brain? How do they develop, and why? The developmental cognitive neuroscience approach he takes to these questions combines insights from behavioral studies, biological experiments, and computational models. The ultimate aim is a unified, biologically and computationally plausible, account of the development of spatial perception and action early in life.

Lynn S. Liben, Ph.D., 1972, University of Michigan
Lynn Liben is interested in both cognitive and social development, and in their interface. Current work in cognitive development focuses on children's growing ability to understand graphic representations, including maps, satellite imagery, photographs, and drawings. For example, in a collaborative grant with geographers, astronauts, earth scientists, educators, and other members of the psychology department, she is studying the use of various scientific visualization tools (e.g., Geographic Information Systems software) with children and adults. Also under study are the origins and amelioration of sex differences in spatial skills. Work in social development focuses on gender and racial stereotypes, with particular interest in the ways in which cognitive processes play a role in understanding and modifying these stereotypes.

Keith E. Nelson, Ph.D., 1970, Yale University
Keith Nelson's interests concern cognitive developmental theory. His research involves children's acquisition and use of language and art. He also works with microcomputer-multimedia applications in educational research aimed at improving communication, art, and thinking in normal and handicapped children. Another facet of theorizing deals with the ways that cognition, emotion, and motivation are intertwined in children's learning.
Current projects include:
• Child drawing and child creativity
• Facilitating syntax facilitation in language-delayed and language-normal children
• For autistic, deaf, and learning-disabled children, software-based facilitation of literacy and language skills
• Theoretical work on how language input is utilized by children in acquiring language
• Longitudinal examination of relations between language acquisition & emotional regulation
• refining dynamic systems theoretical accounts of how learning proceeds in many domain