Overview of Research
Faculty and student research has both a basic and applied focus. We are engaged in research regarding the social and cultural contexts of human development with particular emphasis on issues concerning linguistic and cognitive development in both children and adults. Particular social and cultural contexts concern, for example, the effects of medical trauma, urban poverty, literacy, work-place environments, gender, minority status, and urban schooling. The range of developmental topics studied includes such classical areas as Cognition, Social Development, Infancy, Perceptual Development, and Language Development and such emerging areas as Sociocultural Theory, Cultural Psychology, Narrative Analysis, Semiotics, Activity Theory, Adult Development, Pediatric Psychology, and Environmental Psychology. While our basic research draws upon the resources of New York City and often has been cited as evidential bases for social policy, many of our faculty and students also engage in applied research directly addressing practical problems related to the quality of life.
Areas of Inquiry
- Social-cognitive & moral development
- Social interaction
- The cultural nature of development
- Cognition and affect
- Learning & development
- Representation
- Media studies
- Philosophy of science
- Adult development in the workplace
- Socio-cultural analysis and activity theory
- Diversity in development
- Discourse Theory and Analysis
- Semiotic and activity theory
- Language and cognitive development
- Effects of Extreme Social & Physical Environments
- Memory development
- Language and thought
- Conceptual development
- Self and identity development
- Gender development
- Parent-child relations
- Literacy and knowledge
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- Peer culture
- Atypical infant development
- Communication practices
- Urban education
- Feminist psychology
- Ecological studies of children's environments
- Infant perceptual & motor development
- Evolution and development
- Biology and ethics
- Nature-nurture dichotomy
- Social constructionism
- Unconscious cognitive processes
- Family and peer interaction
- Levels of organization
- Child abuse
- Dialects in context
- Ethnolinguistic studies
- Child forensic psychology
- Body image as
- Theories of development
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Applied Research
- Evaluating science and mathematics curricula for the New York City Public Schools
- Implementing and evaluating technology based transitions in the work place in the New York City Transit Authority
- Developing and implementing computer based environments that enable New York City hospitalized chronically ill children to communicate with other hospitalized children throughout the country
- Training public service attorneys to interview New York City children who have been physically and sexually abused
- Reviewing New York State legislation and policies as they affect poor and working class families
- Evaluating families for New York City family courts on matters of child custody
- Studying the effects of peer based education in New York City Public Schools
- Studying the effects of peer & teacher-student interactions in urban public schools
- Implementing and evaluating computer based curricula to promote learning and literacy in elementary schools in New York City
- Studying interventions regarding family stress and coping with life-threatening illnesses in children
- Research and development of community and television outreach programs on literacy for children through the New York City based Children's Television Workshop
- Studying new approaches to working with children and youth in the context of war and political transition
- Studying how African-American women in New York City cope with and respond to the medical conditions of having lupus
- Studying the nature/nurture relationship as it applies to assumptions regarding education, medicine, and political policy
- Studying children’s, adolescents’, and adults conceptions of children’s rights &human rights more broadly
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