Lab member Sarah McCormick (PhD student) has received a 2019 predissertation research grant from the UMass Amherst Graduate School. The funds will support Sarah’s developing research project examining environmental and neurocognitive factors in preschoolers’ theory of mind development, with an emphasis on how household chaos might impeded effective socialization of these important social cognitive skills in early childhood.
Monthly Archives: May 2019
Zhe Wang awarded NSF early career award
Asst Prof Zhe Wang (Texas Tech University), an alumna of IDDLab, has received a National Science Foundation Early Career Research Award. Dr. Wang will be studying the development of math anxiety in childhood and adolescence, and how this influences differences between youth in their growth in math skills.
International study of adolescents published: Chaos and neighborhood risks
Lab director Kirby Deater-Deckard and his colleagues have just published a paper in a special issue of the journal Developmental Science. In this longitudinal study, the international team examined three years of data (ages 13-15) from six low- and middle-income countries in the ongoing “PAC” international project. There were wide differences between adolescents’ exposures to household chaos (e.g., noise, crowding, lack of routines) and neighborhood dangers (e.g., gangs, violence). The higher the exposure, the higher the levels of adolescents’ adjustment problems such as depressive symptoms, delinquency, and school problems. These effects were explained in part by increases in harsh parenting. The effects were very consistent across the countries studied, even though there are large cultural differences.
SRCD social policy report on digital games and cognitive development
Read UMass Amherst story on this report publication