2009 National Symposium on Family Issues
Biosocial Research Contributions to Understanding Family Processes and Problems
Speakers and Discussants
Alison Fleming is a Professor of Psychology and a Canada Research Chair in Neurobiology at the University of Toronto. Her research explores the biological mechanisms mediating mothering in a variety of species including human mothers. Recent work has focused on the interactive effects of early life adversity and genotype on the development of mothering behavior and its neural and neurochemical bases. Her work has also focused on brain activation patterns to infant stimuli in new mothers, and the relation of attention and theory of mind to mothering in teen mothers and depressed mothers.
Anne Storey is Professor of Psychology at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. Her research focuses on parental behavior in species where both parents provide substantial care for their offspring. In her research, Dr. Storey considers ecological, social and physiological perspectives. She has published work on the hormonal basis of parental care and parental responsiveness in both men and women. Currently, she is studying whether repeated exposure to infant stimuli prior to birth enhances hormonal reactivity and maternal responsiveness of new mothers.
Susan Calkins is Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she directs the Child and Family Research Network. She conducts longitudinal research on the development of biological and behavioral indicators of self-regulation across infancy, childhood and adolescence. Her conduct studies focus on the implications of self-regulation for early behavior problems, school readiness, peer relationships, and risky behavior.
Jay Belsky is Director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues and Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck University of London. His areas of expertise include the effects of day care, parent-child relations during the infancy and early childhood years, the transition to parenthood, the etiology of child maltreatment, and the evolutionary basis of parent and child functioning. Dr. Belsky's research is marked by a focus on fathers as well as mothers, marriages as well as parent-child relations, and naturalistic home observations of family interaction.
Jenae Neiderhiser is Professor of Psychology at Penn State. She is interested in understanding the interplay between genes and environment throughout the lifespan. The environmental influences that she has examined most closely are interpersonal relationships - including parent-child, spouse, sibling and peer relationships. An ongoing focus of her work has been examining how individuals influence their environments, in part because of their genetically-influenced characteristics (genotype-environment correlation).
S. Alexandra Burt (Alex) is a clinical psychologist and behavioral geneticist working as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University. Her research interests center on the roles of genes, environments, and gene-environment interplay in the development of antisocial behavior. With funding from the NIMH, she is currently conducting a twin study of gene-environment interplay in childhood conduct problems. She also co-directs the Michigan State University Twin Registry, a large-scale registry of child and adolescent twins designed to examine genetic, environmental, and neurobiological influences on internalizing and externalizing symptoms and behaviors.
Sheri Berenbaum is Professor of Psychology at Penn State. Her research focuses on the development of individual differences in cognition and social behavior from a neuroscience perspective. She is particularly interested in the effects of prenatal sex hormones on the development of sex-typed behaviors and how those effects are mediated directly by the brain and indirectly through the social environment. Dr. Berenbaum's behavioral studies of exposure to high prenatal levels of androgens have been supported by NICHD since 1985.
Sally I. Powers is Professor of Psychology in the clinical division and the Neuroscience and Behavior Program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She directs the interdisciplinary Center for Research on Families at UMass. As a developmental psychopathologist, she investigates the role of interpersonal behavior in close relationships and neuroendocrine functioning in the development of psychopathology. She is testing a biopsychosocial model of factors hypothesized to contribute to the gender difference in prevalence of adolescent and young adult depression.
Steven W. Gangestad is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico. Through his research he seeks to understand how natural selection shaped adaptations for mating and reproduction in humans and the implications of those evolutionary outcomes for romantic relationships in modern contexts. His recent work examines evidence for changes in women's sexual psychology across the menstrual cycle from this perspective.
Brian D'Onofrio is a clinical psychologist who is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University. His research explores the etiology of psychological and adjustment problems in children and adolescents, particularly the role of parental divorce and psychopathology, as well as pregnancy-related risks. He is currently using behavior genetic, longitudinal, and intervention studies to explore how genetic and environmental processes act and interact across development.
David Schmitt is Caterpillar Inc. Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Bradley University. His research interests include evolutionary and cross-cultural approaches to understanding personal relationships, romantic attachment styles, and gender differences in human mating strategies. He is Founding Director of the International Sexuality Description Project, the goal of which is to investigate how culture, personality, and gender combine to influence sexual attitudes and behaviors.
S. Philip Morgan is Professor of Sociology, Director of the Social Science Research Institute, and Norb R. Schaeffer Professor of International Studies at Duke University. He is former president of the Population Association of America. Dr. Morgan's recent NIH projects focus on developing new models of family and fertility change and diversity across groups and late 20th century fertility trends and differences in the U.S. Much of his work has focused on the United States but he has collaborated on projects focusing on other developed and developing countries.
Guang Guo is Professor of Sociology at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Carolina Population Center Fellow. His recent work focuses on genes and human behaviors and outcomes. Dr. Guo is interested in (1) the interactions between genetic influences and social context such as peers, families, neighborhoods, and schools with respect to demographic and other social/health behaviors; (2) estimating the influences of social/environmental factors controlling for genetic factors; and (3) methodologies that use twin/sibling data and that use DNA data.
Mark V. Flinn is Professor of Anthropology at University of Missouri, Columbia. His research is in the area of evolutionary human biology and centers on psychological stress, family relationships and the human brain. His current research includes a 20-year study of childhood stress in a rural Caribbean community by monitoring hormone and immune functioning. Dr. Flinn uses both ethnographic and cross-cultural techniques to analyze universal and adaptive variations of family relationships and effects on child development. He is interested in the evolution of the human brain and its cognitive abilities.
Gary W. Evans is Professor of Human Development and the Elizabeth Lee Vincent Professor of Human Ecology, Departments of Design and Environmental Analysis, Cornell University. Dr. Evans is an environmental and developmental psychologist interested in how the physical environment affects the health and well being of children and their families. His specific areas of expertise include environmental stress, children's environments (e.g. schools, daycare, housing), and the environment of poverty. He has been a scientific advisor to the WHO for over 20 years.
Dalton Conley is Dean for the Social Sciences and University Professor at New York University. Dean Conley's research focuses on the determinants of economic opportunity within and across generations. In this vein, he studies sibling differences in socioeconomic success, racial inequalities, the salience of physical appearance to economic status, the measurement of class, and how health and biology affect (and are affected by) social position. He holds appointments at NYU's Wagner School of Public Service, as an Adjunct Professor of Community Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
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