The University of Chicago
Department of Psychology
5848 South University Avenue
Chicago, IL, 60637
Lauren Howard
Background
Lauren is a doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program, working with Dr. Amanda Woodward. She graduated with a BPhil in Psychology and Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007, completing a thesis on social development with Dr. Celia Brownell and working with Dr. Jana Iverson. After graduating, she worked as a lab manager for Dr. Rachel Barr at Georgetown University where she was introduced to the mechanisms involved in infant and child memory. In 2010, Lauren received her Masters from the University of Maryland (Thesis title: Contributions of Agency vs. Non-Agency on Sequential Memory in 3-year-olds). Lauren is currently combining her previous experience and interests to study how children learn and remember in various social settings.
Research Interests
Lauren is interested in how and what children learn from others. Specifically, how agency affects memory when presented in various formats (live, video, or books), and whether children preferentially attend to and learn from certain individuals. She has studied these questions using behavioral studies, eyetracking procedures, and neuroscience methods such as ERP/EEG.
Publications/Presentations
Howard, L., Gorden, N., & Woodward, A. (2011). “The Effects of Agency on Sequential Memory in 3-year-olds”. Presented at the meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Montreal, CA, 2011.
Barr, R., Shuck, L., Salerno, K., Atkinson, E., & Linebarger, D. (2010). Music interferes with learning from television during infancy. Infant and Child Development, 19(3), 313-331.
Shuck, L., Henderson, A., & Woodward, A. (2010). “Infants Imitate Irrelevant Actions Regardless of Linguistic Group Presentation”. Presented at the meetings of the International Society of Infant Studies, Baltimore, Maryland, 2010.
Gerson, S. Gerson, S., Shuck, L.H., & Woodward, A.L. (2009). “Finding the Goals that Structure Events”. Presented at the meetings of the Cognitive Development Society, San Antonio, Texas, 2009.
Zack, B., Barr, R., Shuck, L., Sperle, E., Shroff, G., Dickerson, K., Miller, S., Gerhardstein, P., Meltzoff, A. (2008). “Infants fail at a transfer of learning task from 2D to 3D and 3D to 2D”. Presented at the meetings of the International Society of Infant Studies, Vancouver, Canada, 2007.
