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Recent Dissertations

While the majority of our graduate students have backgrounds in psychology, many majored in anthropology, biology, education, english, history, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, and sociology as undergraduates. The graduate students come from all parts of the United States as well as many foreign countries. Those completing a doctoral degree usually take from four to seven years. The majority of our graduates go on to careers in university and college teaching, some into government and commercial positions The titles of some of the dissertations completed in the 1994-05 time period give an idea of some of the research created in the programs.

Alibali, Martha - “Processes of Cognitive Change Revealed in Gesture and Speech.” 1994.
Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Mix, Kelly - “Preschoolers' Recognition of Cardinal Equivalence.” 1995.
Associate Professor, Indiana University

Sandberg, Elisabeth - “Development of Spatial Representation: The Emergence of Hierarchical Organization.” 1995.
Associatet Professor, Suffolk University

Albro, Elizabeth - “The Role of Liking In Children's Memories and Appraisal of Peer Conflicts.” 1996.
Researcher, Institute of Education Sciences, US Dept. of Education

Wei, Jianping - “Chromatic Induction from Complex Surrounds.” 1996.
Lens Designer

Compton, Rebecca - “Interactions between Mood and Left-Right Asymmetries in Attention.” 1997.
Assistant Professor, Haverford College

Garber, Philip - “Using Gesture and Speech to Index Planning in a Problem-Solving Task: A Comparative Study of Adults and Children Explaining the Tower of Hanoi Puzzle.” 1997.
Director of University Assessment, National Lewis University

Jin, Wenying - “The Role of Color Memory in Mediating Successive Color Constancy.” 1998.
Principal Engineer, Polaroid Corporation

Barr, Dale - “ A Theory Of Dynamic Coordination For Conversational Interaction” 2000.
Assistant Professor, University of California at Riverside

Kelly, Spencer Dougan - “Children’s Understanding of Pragmatically Ambiguous Speech: Have We Been Missing The Point?” 2000.
Assistant Professor, Colgate College

Sommerville, Jessica - “Means-end Reasoning: Infants' developing Ability to Interpret and Perform Intentional Actions.” 2002.
Assistant Professor, University of Washington

Norris, Catherine – “Exploring the Negative Bias: A Social Neuroscience Perspective” 2004
Post-doctoral Fellow, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Hammond, Amy – “Developmental Exploration of the "Default" Order of Created Gesture Systems” 2005
Assistant Professor. Centenary College

Cook, Susan Wagner – “Gesture, Movement and Working Memory: A Functional Account”  2006.
Assistant Professor. University of Rochester.

Fenn, Kimberly – “Waking Up to the Impact of Sleep: Consolidation of Generalized Skill Learning and Declarative Memory Formation” 2006
Research Associate. University of Chicago

Lourenco, Stella -  "How Is Location Information Mapped In Childhood? Some Underlying Principles" 2006
Assistant Professor. Emory University.

Parrill, Fey – “Subjects in the Hands of Speakers: An Experimental Study of the Relationship between Syntactic Subject and Speech-Gesture Patterning in Narrative Discourse”  2006.
Assistant Professor, Case Western Reserve University.

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