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FEATURES

New HD faculty explore the power of identity and positive youth development

Human Development has added two new faculty members this year, Misha Inniss-Thompson and Adam Hoffman. Click here to read more.

Connecting communities with brain science

The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR) is launching a new project – the Community Neuroscience Initiative, (CNI) headed by four Human Development faculty, Anthony Burrow, Marlen Gonzalez, Eve De Rosa, and Adam Anderson. All have been engaged in STEM outreach and engagement and envision CNI as a way to build connections between neuroscience research, STEM education, and community empowerment. Click here to read more.

The risk of silence and the underreporting of concussions

Peter Ajayi

Concussion injuries among high school and college athletes have become a central concern in youth sports. Prompt self-reporting of a concussion immediately improves brain recovery and is necessary to reduce second-impact syndrome, rapid swelling of the brain after a person receives a second concussion before symptoms of the first concussion have subsided. Unfortunately, repetitive head injuries in adolescents and young adults are often underreported. Peter Ajayi, HD’19, David Garavito, JD/PhD ’21, and Valerie Reyna, professor of human development, are the first to detail an association between socioeconomic status (SES) and concussion reporting intentions among adolescents and young adults. Click here to read more.

HD students achieve during the COVID-19 pandemic

Despite the restrictions on campus to prevent the spread of COVID-19, graduate and undergraduate students in Human Development persisted and excelled in their research and outreach activities. Click here to read more.

Human Development has added two new faculty members this year, Misha Inniss-Thompson and Adam Hoffman.

Misha Inniss-Thompson

Misha Inniss-Thompson

Dr. Misha Inniss-Thompson received her doctorate in Community Research and Action at Vanderbilt University. She is an alumnus of Cornell's Department of Human Development (with minors in Inequality and Africana Studies) and was awarded the Jerome Holland Award for her achievements as a scholar and leader and was a Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Scholar.

Dr. Inniss-Thompson's work is concerned with shifting educational and social policies in ways that better support African-American girls. In particular, her research focuses on the impact of ethnic-racial socialization in shaping Black girls’ socioemotional wellbeing and academic outcomes. She has analyzed national education data and conducted interviews to understand the impact of these policies on the educational experiences of African American girls. Her report, Summary of Discipline Data for Girls in U.S. Public Schools: An Analysis from the 2015 - 2016 U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Collection, has been cited by legal scholars and the 2019 documentary, Pushout, for bringing to light inequities in school policies that "push" African-American girls out of the school system. Dr. Inniss-Thompson is interested in using ecological systems theory and culturally relevant positive youth development models as a tool for understanding Black girls’ experiences during the transition from middle childhood to adolescence. She is passionate about centering youth voices in the research process through methodological approaches such as photovoice and youth participatory action research.

Adam Hoffman

Adam Hoffman

Dr. Adam Hoffman received his doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has been an assistant professor of psychology at Western Carolina University. Dr. Hoffman's research addresses the development of identities and how they change over time, the relationship between identities and mental health, well-being, and academic motivation, and how identities can be leveraged to promote positive youth development and outcomes. In addition, he has analyzed social networks to investigate how peers and friends influence adolescents' ethnic-racial identity development. Although research has demonstrated that social identity can promote a more positive sense of self, Dr. Hoffman is one of few researchers who have been developing interventions that capitalize on this asset.

Dr. Hoffman has studied the psychological experiences of adolescents from a wide range of ethnic/racial groups, including African American, American Indian, European French, European American, Latinx, and North African French adolescents in American and international communities. He received a Graduate Research Fellowship and a Graduate Research Opportunity Worldwide award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) which enabled him to study ethnic and gender identity development in French and North African French adolescents in Marseille, France.  For his dissertation, he developed a brief social-psychological intervention to promote STEM motivation and ethnic and gender identity among American Indian adolescents. Dr. Hoffman recently presented his research on child development within the Cherokee Indian community at the Carolina Consortium on Human Development - click here to watch his talk.

Anthony Burrow

The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR) is launching a new project – the Community Neuroscience Initiative, (CNI) headed by four Human Development faculty, Anthony Burrow, Marlen Gonzalez, Eve De Rosa, and Adam Anderson. All have been engaged in STEM outreach and engagement and envision CNI as a way to build connections between neuroscience research, STEM education, and community empowerment. They are excited by community partnerships with scientists that lead to the inception of a project, in contrast to research that typically begins within the university and then involves a community.

Marlen Gonzalez, assistant professor of human development, received a 2021 Cornell Center for Social Sciences fellowship for her project, “The Neuroecology of Space Use, Belonging and Underrepresented Minority experience in Higher Education.” Although most colleges have offices for diversity and inclusion and have used

Marlen Gonzalez

strategies to create a "sense of belonging" to improve racial disparities in graduation rates, they lack ways to implement neurological moderators. Dr. Gonzalez proposes a neuroecological model to facilitate students’ context-based memory and enhance connectivity between memory and motivational neural systems. This approach would study, for example, the ways in which the social and physical interactions of students in a college environment could impact the neurochemistry of the brain involved in memory and motivation. Dr. Gonzalez wants science about the brain easily understood by all people, not just scientists, and this knowledge can empower communities.

Adam Anderson and Eve De Rosa

Eve De Rosa, Adam Anderson, and Anthony Burrow co-founded and co-direct, "The Brain Days Program." Dr. De Rosa has been a leader in the CHE community as Dean of Students and a Pathways to Social Justice fellow. She made headlines as the first woman, person of color, and professor from the College of Human Ecology (CHE) to be elected to Cornell's Dean of Faculty. She and Dr. Anderson co-direct the Affect and Cognition Lab (ACLAB). Dr. Burrow directs the BCTR and the Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE).

As part of The Brain Days Program, once a month, a team of undergraduates travels from Cornell to the Syracuse Academy of Sciences charter school to deliver hands-on, interactive lessons to elementary students on topics such as parts of the brain, the way neurons in the brain connect to each other, and how the brain is involved in emotions and self-control. At the same time, the Cornell students work with Syracuse Academy of Sciences high school student interns who assist with the lessons. The lab has been collecting scientific data on the program, to assess, for example, whether the children enjoy the lessons, and if their academic performance is influenced by the Brain Days program.

Peter Ajayi

Concussion injuries among high school and college athletes have become a central concern in youth sports. One of the most important decisions an athlete can make is whether to report a concussion to the coach. Prompt self-reporting of a concussion immediately improves brain recovery and is necessary to reduce second-impact syndrome, rapid swelling of the brain after a person receives a second concussion before symptoms of the first concussion have subsided. Unfortunately, repetitive head injuries in adolescents and young adults are often underreported. Peter Ajayi, HD’19, David Garavito, JD/PhD ’21, and Valerie Reyna, professor of human development, are the first to detail an association between socioeconomic status (SES) and concussion reporting intentions among adolescents and young adults. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bdm.2235).

David Garavito

Dr. Reyna and her students incorporated Fuzzy-Trace Theory (FTT) (Reyna, 2012) into the research to capture important unexplained variance in the self-reporting of concussions. According to FTT, when people make decisions, they process the information in two ways, as "gist," or its bottom-line meaning, and "verbatim," or its superficial details. The gist and verbatim formats are encoded and retrieved from memory separately. Gist processing is a more developmentally advanced form of reasoning that reflects education, culture, beliefs, and other life experiences. As people age, they increasingly rely on gist, rather than verbatim, processing of information which leads to healthier intentions and behaviors. Although adolescents and adults process information as gist and verbatim, adolescents are more likely to rely on verbatim processing and the finer distinctions of the tradeoff between risks and rewards when making decisions (e.g., "The chance of something awful happening to me is very low, so I can take a chance.") whereas adults are more likely to rely on a simple, qualitative categorical gist of risk (e.g., "There is a chance of a catastrophic outcome, and I should avoid putting myself in harm's way at all costs.")

Valerie Reyna

This is the first study to propose and demonstrate a link between SES and reporting intentions. They hypothesized this connection because of putative effects of SES on cognitive development, namely, on gist processing. Based on FTT, categorical gist processing and gist principles of risk avoidance are predicted to develop with experience from childhood through adulthood and to promote healthy decision-making. Low SES, they posited, offers fewer opportunities for enriching experiences, on the one hand, and greater exposure to stressors, on the other hand, delaying cognitive development. This is consistent with previously reported SES differences in gist processing. Consequently, they expected that SES operating through gist processing, such as the categorical insight that a concussion can produce life-altering brain damage, would be associated with higher reporting intentions. High-school and young adults in their study completed a survey about concussions and sports. Overall, for each of the two age groups, and for athletes as well as nonathletes, SES was associated with reporting intentions. It was the responses to questions on gist processing, concussion knowledge, and healthier attitudes about concussions that were each associated with greater intentions to report concussions. Ajayi, Garavito, and Reyna conclude in their paper that although educational initiatives currently focus on rote knowledge of concussions and healthy attitudes to reduce the underreporting of concussions, they recommend that future interventions use gist to communicate risk, especially to low SES youth by adapting successful FTT-based risk-reduction curricula from other domains.

Peter Ajayi received a post-baccalaureate, NIH Intramural Research Training Award to study the myofibrillar and mitochondrial networks within skeletal muscles using advanced imaging methods at the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. He is currently attending Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

David Garavito received his J.D. from Cornell Law School in 2020 and received his Ph.D. this year from the Law, Psychology, and Human Development Program at the Laboratory for Rational Decision Making at Cornell University. His research examines the perception of risks and risk-taking within the context of sports and the cognitive and neural effects of concussive and sub-concussive injuries.

Despite the restrictions on campus to prevent the spread of COVID-19, graduate and undergraduate students in Human Development persisted and excelled in their research and outreach activities.

Celine Cammarata

Celine Cammarata, HD-PhD '21, a student of Professor Eve De Rosa, received a 2021 FABBS Doctoral Dissertation Research Excellence Award for her thesis, The role of acetylcholine in flexible cognition across age and species. The Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (FABBS) is a coalition of scientific societies focused on conducting advocacy, education, and communication activities in support of the sciences of mind, brain, and behavior. Recognizing and bringing attention to the work of early-career scientists is a critical part of their mission. Dissertations are evaluated in terms of both the scientific merit and the broader societal impact of the research. Celine reflected on her graduate school experience, career exploration, and professional development in an interview for the Graduate School - click to read more.

Elyse Ganss

Elyse Ganss '21 received the Zuckerman Award for Excellence in Human Development Studies for her senior honors thesis. As a member of The Little Thinkers lab, Elyse studied the effect of role models on young girls' persistence and engagement in science (click this link to watch her presentation). In addition to her major in human development, Elyse completed minors in psychology and communications. She is a member of the Psychology Honors Society and is involved with the Steminist Movement, an outreach organization that promotes STEM activities for middle school girls. Elyse hopes to obtain a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology.

Judy Liu

Judy Liu ‘21 received the Human Ecology Alumni Association's 2021 Outstanding Senior Award for outstanding student leadership, academic achievement, and commitment to the College and community. Judy was able to balance the coursework and research for the major in human development and minors in education and gerontology with numerous community engagement activities, including, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Ithaca and Ballet and Books. In her junior year, Judy was a PRYDE Scholar, awarded by the Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE) in the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, and worked in Professor Tamar Kushnir's Early Childhood Cognition Lab. She studied children's beliefs about free will and how children aged 7-11 years old thought about themselves, the people in their lives, and the world during the pandemic. To learn more about the PRYDE Scholars program, click this link to hear this year's scholars discuss their experiences.

Joanna Papadakis

Joanna Papadakis ’21 received the 2021 Cornell Campus-Community Leadership Award, an honor given by the Division of University Relations to a graduating senior who has shown exceptional town-gown leadership and innovation. She and students in the Masters of Public Health worked with the Tompkins County Health Department and Office of the Medical Examiner to develop a coordinated worst-case emergency plan for Tompkins County. Joanna's experience collaborating with the local community, her understanding of the culture, and her problem-solving approach made her an invaluable asset to the project. She was interviewed by Gary Stewart of the Cornell University Community Relations Group on his radio program, "All Things Equal." Click this link to hear the podcast.

Cornell Undergraduate Research Board (CURB) Symposium was held virtually on May 4-7. For over 35 years, in one of Cornell's largest undergraduate research colloquiums, hundreds of undergraduates from all majors and disciplines have the opportunity to share their research with the Cornell community in a poster competition. Five students from Human Development gave presentations by Zoom which can be viewed by clicking on the name of each student below:

Charlotte Borgers ’21,  Preschoolers Reasoning about Food: The Roles of Health, Desirability, and Permissibility

Emi Carpenter ’23, Project GripTape: Exploring the Role of Passion Projects in Positive Youth Development

Elyse Ganss '21, Starting Young: How Early Role Models Impact Young Girls' Persistence in Science

Catherine Gorey '21, Stereotypes and Sexism: Gendered Power Dynamics in Perceptions of Workplace Sexual Harassment Accusations

Phil Martinez '21 Norms for Emotion-False Memory Lists and Semantic and Phonological False Memory

 

 

 

 

FEATURES

Medical decision making and COVID-19 risks

Valerie Reyna leads discussions about communicating the risks of COVID-19 to the public.

COVID-19 pandemic spurs family reconciliation

Karl Pillemer of the Cornell Reconciliation Project writes about how the COVID-19 crisis has led some people to reconcile with their families.

From cultural differences to human universals

Qi Wang articulates the role of cultural psychology in bridging cultural gaps in psychological research and in society.

Spatial language and play are key to developing spatial skills

Marianella Casasola shows how multisensory play in naturalistic settings is fundamental to the early development of visual-spatial abilities.

Smoothing career paths for women in science

Wendy Williams and Jane Mendle contribute to our understanding of the career challenges women in academic sciences face and the way forward.

Valerie Reyna, Lois and Mel Tukman Professor of Human Development, Director of the Human Neuroscience Institute, and Co-Director of the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research, was invited to moderate the symposium “Responding to COVID-19: Emerging insights from social, behavioral and economic sciences,” for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. You can watch the video recording below:

Refer to Dr. Reyna's publications to learn more about her Fuzzy-Trace Theory approach to decision making about COVID-19 risk:

Reyna, V. F. (2020). A scientific theory of gist communication and misinformation resistance, with implications for health, education, and policy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912441117

Reyna, V. F. (2020). Decision making about risk in the era of the novel coronavirus disease. CHEST, 158(4), 1310-1311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2020.07.005

Reyna, V. F. (2020). Of viruses, vaccines, and variability: Qualitative meaning matters. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.05.015

Dr. Reyna also chaired the symposium, "Theories of medical decision making: Explaining, predicting, and improving health and healthcare" at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making. You can watch the video recording below:

Marianella Casasola, professor in the Department of Human Development (HD), has provided research and outreach opportunities for many students and has observed how these interpersonal interactions have developed their professional skills. She will draw from her experiences in her new role as Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs. Through collaboration with professors and students, she seeks to enhance the undergraduate experience in the College of Human Ecology.

The effect of spatial language on preschool children's spatial skills

In a recent paper, Casasola presents groundbreaking research on the effect of spatial language, (i.e., using words to describe the spatial properties of an object in the environment), on spatial skills. Spatial skills are important to our everyday lives; for example, it makes it possible for us to locate our car keys and travel the route to work. Spatial skills are also linked to academic success in math and careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Casasola designed experiments to test for a causal link between preschool children’s exposure to spatial language and advances in their spatial skills. She investigated whether preschool children repeatedly exposed to a wide array of spatial language in a natural setting, such as when playing over several weeks would transfer what they learned to spatial skills that were not part of the training. The results provided the first experimental evidence that children’s experience with spatial language during spatial play did benefit nontrained spatial skills. Casasola views this outcome as analogous to how parents and children use language in naturalistic settings and this learning transfers to preschool children’s spatial skills.

CCE Summer Internship Program

Casasola's research has shown that play is essential for early childhood learning and she has designed evidence-based outreach programs with interns from the CCE Summer Internship Program to disseminate recommendations. This past summer, her research team, investigated parents' beliefs about learning through play and how it might impact cognitive development and future academic performance. Will parental beliefs affect the types of play materials they provide their children and do they think about the educational value of the materials? Dr. Casasola's CCE summer intern, Radiah Khandokar, wrote a weekly blog about her experience working with CUCE-NYC on the development of an 8-week parent education curriculum about the role of play in early childhood learning.

Reference cited in this article:

Casasola, M., Wei, W. S., Suh, D. D., Donskoy, P., & Ransom, A. (2020). Children’s exposure to spatial language promotes their spatial thinking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(6), 1116–1136. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000699

 

Wendy Williams

International Day of Women and Girls in Science is February 11th and examining the factors and policies that impact women's careers in STEM sciences has been an on-going focus of HD faculty. Dr. Wendy Williams, professor of human development and director of the Cornell Institute for Women in Science (CIWS), conducts research and disseminates information relevant to women's experiences in STEM careers. Her work was featured in an online article of the Yale Scientific Magazine. Williams has reported that women in math-intensive fields are particularly hindered by the impacts of parenting. Her studies revealed that relative to men, women face significantly more stress and career complications in their pursuit of academic tenure.  Women typically apply for tenure-track positions between the ages of 27 and 33. Raising a family is often incompatible with a career path that demands a singular focus on academic productivity. Williams points out that the tenure system has not evolved with the needs of women. One of Williams' policy recommendations for encouraging women to enter STEM careers is to permit women with newborns to work remotely from home and reduce the workload of parenting. The development and use of digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that it is possible to conduct research remotely and make it a viable option for tenure-tracked mothers. Read more about Dr. Williams' research and resources on the CIWS website.

Jane Mendle

In September 2020, the Association for Psychological Science (APS) published the first-ever gender parity review of psychological science: “The Future of Women in Psychological Science.” The consensus was that although gender gaps for women in psychological science are closing, there is more work to be done. Jane Mendle, professor of human development, was an author of the report. It was considered one of APS’s most highly cited publications from 2020. Click on the arrow below to listen to a discussion with Mendle and her co-authors for more context.