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Dr. Davis-Kean is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan where her research focuses on the various pathways that the socio-economic status (SES) of parents relates to the cognitive/achievement outcomes (particularly mathematics) of their children. Her primary focus is on parental educational attainment and how it can influence the development of the home environment throughout childhood, adolescence, and the transition to adulthood. Davis-Kean is also a Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research where she is the Program Director of the Population, Neurodevelopment, and Genetics (PNG) program. This collaboration examines the complex transactions of brain, biology, and behavior as children and families develop across time. She is interested in how both the micro (brain and biology) and macro (family and socioeconomic conditions) aspects of development relate to cognitive changes in children across the lifespan. 

Most of my research has been concentrated on exploring and describing the relationships that some preschool-aged children have with imaginary companions. The phenomenon of imaginary companions has not received a great deal of attention in the psychological literature and is not well understood, so one goal of my research is to provide a definitive description of pretend friends with an eye toward how they might function in development. Studying the ways in which children talk about, and sometimes interact with, imaginary companions has the potential to illuminate how young children understand and think about social relationships in general. My hope is that by thinking about imaginary companions as relationship partners, I may be able to figure out how they function within children鈥檚 social networks. Such information could lead to a better understanding of why some children create them and their functional significance in development.

I teach courses in introductory and developmental psychology as well as research methods in developmental psychology, in which students conduct projects at the Wellesley College Child Study Center. At the advanced level, I teach seminars on early relationships and social imagination (the ways in which we use our imaginations to help us regulate and understand our relationships). I have also supervised numerous independent study and thesis students, and I greatly enjoy these mentoring opportunities.

In addition to my work on imaginary companions, I work in the area of moral development with a colleague at Notre Dame, Dr. Darcia Narvaez. Dr. Narvaez and I have published a few papers on children鈥檚 understanding of moral texts, and along with several other colleagues we are investigating the match (or mismatch) between current parenting practices and those characteristic of the environment in which human beings evolved. We are concerned that large deviations from the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, as Bowlby called it, may result in developmental compromise, particularly in the domain of morality.

In my free time, I play the oboe with the New Philharmonia Orchestra, and mostly I enjoy spending time with my husband and small but sprightly boy/girl twins. Contrary to popular belief, I am not currently conducting any at-home twin studies.

Candice Odgers is a developmental psychologist who studies adolescents鈥� mental health and development. Her research team tracks adolescents鈥� daily mental health and device use via smartphones and has built new virtual tools for capturing the neighborhoods where children live and attend school.

Dr. Kimberly Day, assistant professor, teaches research methods in psychology, child development, psychology of adolescence, and developmental psychology.

Her research focuses on individual and contextual factors that influence young children's development. Her interests include prenatal and postnatal stressors, children鈥檚 self-regulation, children鈥檚 private speech, and other areas related to parenting and child development. Her research at UWF continues to focus on parenting and preschoolers鈥� regulatory abilities.

Day has published her research in Pediatrics, Journal of the American Medical Association: Pediatrics, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Child Abuse & Neglect, and other peer-reviewed publications.

She received a Bachelor of Science with honors in Psychology magnum cum laude from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA and a master's and doctoral degree in Human Development with a concentration in Child and Adolescent Development from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. She also completed a two-year Lawson Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Dr. Vanessa Rainey, associate professor, teaches developmental psychology, human development across the lifespan, and research methods.

Rainey is a developmental psychologist who is interested in understanding how cognitive control impacts development across a person's lifespan.

Specifically, she is examining the impact executive function (brain basis of self-control) has on various populations and neuroplasticity (ability of the brain to rewire itself) throughout the lifespan. She has written several journal articles on the connection between executive functions and aspects of language development. 

Her current work expands on previous research she conducted with researchers at Loyola University Chicago. They evaluated the differential development of bilingual children who serve as the primary language translator for their family, also known as a language broker. Rainey is the lead author of a chapter that addresses cognitive, socioemotional, and developmental neuroscience perspectives on language brokering, which will be published in the book "Language Brokering in Immigrant Families: Theories and Contexts."

Before coming to UWF in 2014, she taught several psychology courses at Loyola University Chicago.

She received a bachelor鈥檚 in psychology, and a master鈥檚 and doctorate in developmental psychology and statistics from Loyola University Chicago. She also conducted post-doctoral research on executive function development using neuroscience methodologies at Loyola University Chicago鈥檚 Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab.

Dr.  is a professor in the Department of  at the .
Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Illinois, Dr. McElwain received a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Developmental Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Her research focuses on social and emotional development during the first five years of life. In particular, Dr. McElwain investigates the dynamic early-life interactions between parents and children that shape children’s developing abilities to regulate stress. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines neuroscience, psychophysiology, linguistics, and developmental psychology.
Dr. McElwain teaches courses on behavioral research methods and social-emotional development, and she currently serves on the Editorial Board of the American Psychologist.
Lab website:  
Research Interests:


Physiological and neural correlates of infant-mother attachment


Emotion-related dynamics of parent-child interactions


Maternal speech prosody and children's stress regulation


Parental socialization of emotion


Family-friend linkages and children's social-emotional competence


Education


Ph.D., psychology, University of Michigan, 1999


 

Dr. Nancy L. Segal received a B.A. degree in psychology and English literature from Boston University (1973), and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Social Sciences and Behavioral Sciences from the University of Chicago in 1974 and 1982, respectively. She is currently Professor of Psychology and Director of the Twin Studies Center, at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), which she founded in 1991. She is the CSUF 2004-5 Distinguished Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences and the 2004-5 Outstanding Professor of the Year. She also received the 2005 James Shields Award for Lifetime Contributions to Twin Research, from the Behavior Genetics Association and International Society for Twin Studies.
Other honors include the 2006 International Making a Difference Award (Multiple Births, Canada), a 2007 Award for Excellence (Mensa Foundation), and the 2008 Social Responsibility Award (Western Psychological Association).
Dr. Segal is the author of Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005/2007) and Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior (NY: Dutton, 1999, NY: Plume 2000), and is the senior editor of Uniting Psychology and Biology: Integrative Perspectives on Human Development (Washington, D.C.: APA Press, 1997). She received a 2003-2004 American Fellowship from the American Association of University Women for completion of her most recent book. She was also co-principal investigator of an NIMH supported study “Twins, Virtual Twins and Friends: Peers and Adjustment.” Dr. Segal is an Associate Editor of Twin Research and Human Genetics, the official journal of the International Society for Twin Studies.
Dr. Segal has authored approximately 120 scientific articles and book chapters in addition to her three books.  In fall 2007 she was the featured guest speaker at the New Zealand Multiple Births Association, in Auckland.
Dr. Segal’s guest television appearances include Good Morning America, 20/20, the Oprah Winfrey Show and Discovery Health. Good Morning America produced a special twin segment and NPR (Diane Rehm Show) had her on as a guest in the fall 2005, when Indivisible by Two was released. She frequently addresses both professional and general audiences concerning her work. Her current recent interests include behavioral and physical development of twins, the nature of twins’ social relationships, Korean twins separated at birth (one raised in Seoul, the other raised in the United States), the behavioral development of Chinese twins adopted internationally (both by same and different families), and the behavioral consequences of twin loss.
 






1982, Ph.D, University of Chicago
1974, M.A., University of Chicago
1973, B.A, Boston University
 






Twin studies, developmental psychology, evolutionary psychology, sex differences, cooperation and competition.

 is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and an affiliate at the Center for Social & Behavioral Science at Illinois.
The goal of Rudolph’s research is to identify risk and protective processes that amplify or attenuate vulnerability to psychopathology across development, with a focus on adolescence as a stage of particular sensitivity.
Her research uses an interdisciplinary, multi-level, multi-method approach that bridges across developmental and clinical psychology and social affective neuroscience. In particular, her research considers how personal attributes of youth (e.g., gender, temperament, emotion regulation, social motivation, coping, neuroendocrine profiles, neural processing), development (e.g., puberty, social transitions), and contexts (e.g., early adversity, stressors, family and peer relationships) intersect to contribute to the development of psychopathology, particularly depression and suicide. This research aims to understand both the origins and consequences of individual differences in risk.
Her lab uses a variety of methodological approaches, including longitudinal survey-based research, interviews, behavior observations, experimental tasks, hormone assessments and fMRI. Recent work also involves the development of a prevention program for adolescent depression.
Rudolph received her doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and completed a clinical internship at the Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital (now the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior) at UCLA before joining the faculty at Illinois. She served as co-editor of the "Handbook of Developmental Psychopathology" and an associate editor for the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. She has served as a PI and co-PI on several large-scale longitudinal studies funded by the National Institutes of Health.