Earl R. Franklin, an alumnus of the College, established a fellowship in 2006 that awards students in the Departments of Psychology and Comparative Human Development merit based funding to conduct summer research. The Psychology Department selected four Franklin Fellows for 2015. This summer George Abitante looked at whether an acute bout of aerobic exercise can enhance consolidation of participants’ learning to comprehend a synthetic speaker. The study did not find significant differences between the exercise and no exercise conditions, which raises important questions about what kinds of learning do and do not benefit from aerobic exercise. Sherry He's project looked at the effects of the Thirty Million Words intervention, an intervention that teaches parents of low socioeconomic status about the benefits of and strategies for increasing the quantity and quality of linguistic input they provide to their young children. The study asked whether the intervention increased parents’ use of math vocabulary – their use of spatial and number word – and is finding positive results. Evelina Sterina's research is examining the mechanisms that generate and sustain ultradian rhythms. Specifically, the work investigates whether the striatal dopamine system and the arcuate nucleus work as a neural network to modulate ultradian rhythms of activity. Finally, Nathan Vasquez is exploring the effects of group membership on recall of moral and conventional actions in young children. His results suggest that children believe that those who are more "like them" are more likely to behave in conventionally acceptable ways.

Starkey Duncan Alumni Lecture

This past Autumn marks the third annual Starkey Duncan Alumni Lecture. A generous gift from the Duncan family made it possible for us to invite Martha W. Alibali, who received her PhD from the Department in 1991 and is now a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to give a talk. In her talk, entitled Understanding Change in Mathematical Thinking: A Perception-Action Perspective, Dr. Alibali discussed how a focus on perception and action can enrich conceptions of mathematical thinking, learning, and instruction. Alibali considered the learners' perception of mathematics problems and how perceptual encoding guides problem-solving actions and strategy generation. She went on to consider the role of physical actions in mathematical thinking. Finally, she discussed how mathematics instruction guides learners' perceptions of mathematical problems and mathematical actions. Following the talk, the Dr. Alibali and lecture attendees gathered for a lively discussion and refreshments in the Social Sciences Tea Room.