Fellowships at the Center for Developmental Science

2007-2008 Predoctoral Fellows of the Carolina Consortium on Human Development

MIN DENG, Ph.D. Student in Developmental Psychology, UNC-Chapel Hill

Ph.D. Advisor: Jean-Louis Gariépy, Ph.D.
CCHD Mentors: Jean-Louis Gariépy, Ph.D. and Martha J. Cox, Ph.D.

Research Interests:
Min’s broad research interests involve understanding the development of self-regulative capacities that includes the development of behavioral regulation, attentional control, emotional regulation, and physiological regulation in early childhood. She studies how individual characteristics and environmental factors interact to shape the multiple developmental pathways to self-regulatory capacities in the first few years of life. In her dissertation research, Min will conduct both variable-based and person-oriented analyses to examine the ways in which early temperamental predispositions, caregiving environment, and the interactions among these factors shape the developmental pathways to effortful control in early childhood. The data set for her dissertation comes from the Durham Child Health & Development Study, a longitudinal study of children and families in the greater Durham area in North Carolina.

BEN HINNANT, Ph.D. Student in Human Development and Family Studies, UNC-Greensboro

Ph.D. Advisor: Marion O’Brien, Ph.D.
CCHD Mentor: Marion O’Brien, Ph.D.

Research Interests:
Ben’s research interests involve understanding children’s emotional development, particularly the development of empathy, sympathy, and subsequent prosocial behavior. Additionally, he is interested in how the development of cognitive and emotional knowledge and regulation are integrated in areas of prosocial development (e.g., the development of prosocial moral reasoning). His thesis research focused on how cognitive and emotional regulatory abilities and cognitive and emotional perspective taking abilities interact in five-year-old children’s empathy. Ben’s dissertation research involves the study of how multiple internal (executive functioning and emotion regulation) and external (parental support of emotion knowledge and cognitive scaffolding) factors are related to children’s moral reasoning. Ben has a secondary interest in the study of the other side of the prosocial behavior coin, aggression. His collaborative work with other UNCG graduate students and professors includes a study on teacher expectations of children’s academic ability and a study of parental support and children’s early cognitive and social-emotional competence.

KRISTINA L. MCDONALD, Ph.D. Student in Developmental Psychology, Duke University

Ph.D. Advisor: Steven R. Asher, Ph.D.
CCHD Mentor: Steven R. Asher, Ph.D.

Research Interests:
Kristina’s broad research interests focus on the social relationships of children and adolescents, with an emphasis on how they handle conflict with relationship partners. Both her master's thesis and dissertation explore how and why individuals choose to react in vengeful ways to perceived offenses. She is particularly interested in how interpretations about provocation and particular belief systems affect goals and responses in conflict or provocation situations. She has additional, but related, research interests that focus on the quality of peer relationships and the socio-emotional experiences (e.g., loneliness) that are associated with the characteristics of these relationships. Some of her current work explores how maladaptive friendship beliefs are related to concurrent experiences of loneliness, mediated by the quality of one’s best friendship.

NADYA PANCSOFAR, Ph.D. Student in Education, UNC-Chapel Hill

Ph.D. Advisor: Lynne Vernon-Feagans, Ph.D.
CCHD Mentor: Lynne Vernon-Feagans, Ph.D.

Research interests:
Nadya’s research is focused primarily on contextual influences on early language and literacy development and how they impact later school experiences, particularly for low-income and minority children. Nadya’s dissertation examines on the contributions of biological resident fathers during infancy on children’s early communication and expressive language development. She is considering distal and proximal contextual factors, including family SES, father work experiences, mother-father relationships and father-child interactions. Under the mentorship of Lynne Vernon-Feagans, Nadya’s dissertation uses data from the Family Life Project, which includes a large sample of middle-income and low-income African-American and non-African-American fathers.

H. LUZ MCNAUGHTON REYES, Ph.D. Student in Health Behavior and Health Education, Minor in Quantitative Psychology, UNC Chapel Hill

Ph.D. Advisor: Vangie Foshee, Ph.D.
CCHD Mentor: Vangie Foshee, Ph.D.

Research Interests:
Luz’ research focuses on the development of adolescent health risk behaviors, including substance use, violence and sexual risk behaviors. In general, her research seeks to understand the pathways through which neighborhood, family, peer and individual characteristics influence risk behaviors and to specify the conditions which attenuate relations between these factors and risk behaviors. Luz’ current work is focused on understanding the relationship between substance use and partner violence. Her dissertation research will use latent growth curve analysis to examine the developmental relationship between alcohol misuse and adolescent dating abuse perpetration and the role of gender as a potential moderator of this relationship.

PRISCILLA SAN SOUCI, Ph.D. Student in Developmental Psychology, UNC-Chapel Hill

Ph.D. Advisor: Peter A. Ornstein
CCHD Advisor: Peter A. Ornstein

Research Interests:
Priscilla is broadly interested in memory development. Through several studies, she has examined the emergence and consolidation of children’s abilities to remember events and use mnemonic strategies, as well as the contexts (e.g., home and school environments) that help to mediate the development of these incidental and deliberate skills. Currently, Priscilla is focused on how reminders impact children's event memory, specifically how reinstatement - a partial repetition of an early experience that maintains memory over a delay - functions as a mechanism that enables early experience to shape later behavior. Priscilla's dissertation is a study of memory reinstatement in preschoolers. Using a novel event paradigm, she will examine the influence of different reminders presented during a 6-week retention interval.

AMY B. SCHULTING, M.Ed., University of Virginia, 2002; M.A. Duke University, 2006; Ph.D. Student in Clinical Psychology, Duke University

Ph.D. Advisor: Kenneth A. Dodge
CCHD Advisor: Kenneth A. Dodge

Research Interests:
Amy is committed to bridging the gap between research in education and early childhood development with social policy efforts to improve the outcomes of high-risk children. Specifically, Amy’s research has been focused on evaluating the kindergarten transition policies and practices of schools, as well as designing a kindergarten transition intervention to better meet the needs of low-income families. Amy is currently implementing The Kindergarten Home Visit Project for her dissertation. The Kindergarten Home Visit Project is a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of teacher conducted home visits on child outcomes and parent involvement during the transition to kindergarten. This study is the first randomized experiment testing the effect of home visiting as a kindergarten transition policy. The project is currently underway: 44 teachers in 20 Durham public schools were randomized to intervention or control conditions, with approximately 1,000 children and families involved. The results of this study will have important implications for education policy efforts to prevent the early school failure of high-risk children. Amy’s long-term goal is not only to conduct research that will inform education and social policy, but also to assist with the translation of research into school policy for the benefit of low-income children and families.