The overarching goal of this group is to explore from multiple perspectives, populations, and methods, how experience contributes to learning, subsequent behavior, and human growth from infancy through childhood to adulthood. One goal is to identify behavioral, brain, genetic, and neuroendocrine activity patterns that mark periods of enhanced learning and plasticity during which children and adults acquire and lose specialized functions involving perception, motor, memory, language, and theory of mind. By mapping these periods of plasticity, we will learn more about the causes and mechanisms of optimized learning in human development across the lifespan. A second goal is to examine the developing mind as both a function of and an agent in social groups, cultural contexts, and evolutionary history; this approach will create an interdisciplinary exchange in the fields of psychology, sociology, and anthropology.
Core Faculty: