Undergraduates

Undergraduates are a very important part of the Early Social Development Lab. They help with all aspects of the research, including but not limited to: scheduling families, running video recording equipment (VHS, DV, DVD), designing and building new tasks or stimuli, coding data from video, data entry, statistical analyses, and helping with data collection.

Undergraduates thinking about post-baccalaureate study are especially encouraged to participate. Students get excellent, hands-on research experience, learn many things never taught in the classroom, and can be assured of well-informed, detailed letters of recommendation.

Students can participate for course credit by signing up for Directed Research through Psychology Advising. We also hire undergraduatework study students and can sometimes hire undergraduate student employees on an hourly basis.

If you are a senior or recent graduate looking for a PhD program, please look here for more information.

What do we do in this lab?

We study the very early development of many human-specific social skills: peer collaboration and cooperation; complex communication and games with others; imitation; pretend play; understanding others' goals, desires, intentions; self-awareness. We use mostly naturalistic-observational methods, simply designing the environment or the toys to elicit particular kinds of behavior we are interested in. Most of our research is conducted with one- and two-year-olds.

Requirements for Directed Research Participation:

• GPA: 3.3 overall
• Sophomore standing or above
• Developmental Psychology (B+ or better)
• Research Methods (may be waived depending on experience)
• Two-term commitment (any 2 successive terms, including summer)

Other Helpful Background:

• Psych major or other psych coursework
• Previous research experience
• Previous work with young children
• Previous work experience
• Experience with computers and/or videotape equipment and editing
• Comfortable with young children and their parents