Department Of Psychology And Human Development

The Women's Center presents awards in three categories each year: the Margaret Cuninggim Women's Center Leadership Award, the Mentoring Award and the Mary Jane Werthan Award. This spring, the Margaret Cuninggim Women’s Center named five people from the Vanderbilt community as recipients of its annual awards. Read More

The researchers, including Vanderbilt’s team led by Kari Hoffman, focused their efforts on the detection of hippocampal ripples, which are considered biomarkers of memory and are affected by epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. Read More

Ilana Horn Bethany Rittle-Johnson Chezare Warren Mariah Harmon Following Ilana Horn’s selection earlier this year as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, she was inducted on Friday, April 12, at the AERA 2024 annual meeting… Read More

By Jenna Somers   Bethany Rittle-Johnson (Vanderbilt University) Bethany Rittle-Johnson, professor of psychology at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development, recently hosted visiting scholar Serkan Özel through Vanderbilt’s Global Scholars in Residence program. Özel is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics… Read More

Could unlocking metacognitive skills be the key to math motivation in middle school? Teachers across the globe face the same challenge – how to make math not just bearable, but exciting. Research shows that in middle school, motivation for math in students starts to decline. But at the same time,… Read More

Camilla P. Benbow Jason Grissom Carolyn Heinrich Rich Milner Education Week recently released the 2024 Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, an annual list of education researchers who have demonstrated the greatest influence over educational policy and practice. Four researchers from Vanderbilt Peabody College of… Read More

By Jenna Somers Autumn Kujawa A five-year, nearly $3.6 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health will support Autumn Kujawa, associate professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development, and her team in examining changes in brain… Read More

By Jenna Somers Deon Benton Deon Benton, assistant professor of psychology and human development, is leading an experimental study to understand when and how infants learn to distinguish that people can cause action both from a distance and by contact, but objects can only cause action by contact. While… Read More

By Jenna Somers Bahr Weiss Research Professor of Psychology and Human Development Bahr Weiss is helping to lead efforts to develop Vietnam’s licensure criteria for clinical psychologists, and as part of his primary efforts at capacity development, he and his team are adapting, implementing, and evaluating a mindfulness-based… Read More

By Jenna Somers Sophia Vinci-Booher A three-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development will support Sophia Vinci-Booher, assistant professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development, and her team in evaluating brain development… Read More

By Jenna Somers ChatGPT is here to stay, and educators need to adapt to their students using it—at least, that’s what news headlines have suggested for almost a year following ChatGPT’s unveiling. Much of the coverage has given voice to worries about the possibility that AI will hinder learning… Read More

The Peabody Scholars program gives exceptional undergraduate students at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development the opportunity to contribute to the betterment of society through collaborations with organizations around the world in the form of summer service projects. These projects reflect the program’s larger mission to… Read More

By Jenna Somers Amy Booth; Photo by Anne Rayner; VU Little is known about the origins and development of scientific literacy and interests that emerge in early childhood, but according to Amy Booth, professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of education and… Read More

By Jenna Somers Lisa Fazio New research published in Public Opinion Quarterly reveals a correlation between the number of times President Donald Trump repeated falsehoods during his presidency and misperceptions among Republicans, and that the repetition effect was stronger on the beliefs of people who consume information primarily… Read More

By Jenna Somers James R. Booth A five-year, $3.9 million grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders will support novel research into the brain function of language development in 4- to- 8-year-old late talkers with language delay to identify predictive biomarkers that could support early… Read More

By Jenna Somers Autumn Kujawa A two-year, $1.45 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health will support a study to test a novel therapeutic approach for preventing the emergence of anhedonia, a hallmark symptom of depression, in high-risk children. Autumn Kujawa, associate professor of psychology… Read More

By Jenna Somers Krista Mehari Youth violence prevention researcher Krista Mehari joined Vanderbilt University Peabody College of education and human development in May as assistant professor of psychology and human development. As a community-based researcher, Mehari works with schools, police departments, local businesses, and organizations to understand… Read More

By Jenna Somers Lisa Fazio A study recently published in Psychological Science reveals that when people repeatedly encounter headlines about corporate wrongdoing, they view the wrongdoing as less unethical and are more likely to believe the headlines are true. Social media can cause scandalous news to go viral in… Read More

In the Four with a ‘Dore series, we’re getting to know Vanderbilt students four questions at a time. In today’s installment, meet Kareena Gor from Charlotte, NC, a Class of 2025 student with majors in child studies and Spanish with a minor in language sciences.   Read More

Kathryn Humphreys, associate professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt Peabody College, has won a 2023 Early Career Impact Award from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences. Read More