Loyola University Chicago

Department of Psychology

Developmental Psychology Faculty Interests

Professor
Contextual influences on development, especially organized extracurricular activities; Social emotional adjustment; Developmental psychopathology; Obesity.
 
Associate Professor
I am interested in both neurotypical and neurodiverse development. My current research focuses on a range of topics affected by autism spectrum disorder, including socio-emotional functioning, language development, and in autistic adults, promoting success in college. These topics I have also explored in typically developing children and adults. Please see my website for more information about my lab: https://davidsonautismlab.weebly.com
 
Associate Professor
Language development; Bilingual and second language learning; Connection between language and literacy; Classroom talk; Language input; Syntactic priming.
 
Assistant Professor
Developmental cognitive neuroscience; Attention, information processing, and recognition memory in typically developing infants and infants at increased risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) 
 
Professor
Learning in museums; Parent-child conversational interactions; Autobiographical and event memory; narrative development
 
Professor
Self-regulation, school readiness, and academic achievement; early childhood through emerging adulthood; Child care, education, intervention, and policy; poverty, risk, and resilience; Ethnic minority, immigrant children.
 
Assistant Professor
Immigration experiences of Latinx adolescents, the impact of legal status (e.g. undocumented, mixed-status), social belonging, xenophobia, neighborhood context, socio-emotional development, risk, and resilience.
 
Associate Professor
How children and adults learn, generalize and retain information learned through action and gesture; how this differs based on an individual’s ability to interpret movement as meaningful; how this differs based on whether action and gesture are performed by a learner or teacher.
 
 
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Other affiliated faculty from the Psychology Department, School of Education, and the Erikson Institute, contribute to our strengths in offering excellent training in basic and applied research, longitudinal methods, developmental neuroscience, development in the context of schools and out-of-school educational settings, and family and community influences over the life course.