Individual Differences in Development Lab, Psych and Brain Sciences
Join the Individual Differences in Development Lab (IDDLab) at UMass Amherst!
How do we develop into unique individuals? At IDDLab (Prof. Kirby Deater-Deckard, director), we strive to answer this question by applying quantitative statistical modeling to study variation in human development (spanning many diverse topics in cognition, emotion, behavior, and biology) from early childhood through adulthood. We examine genetic, neurological, and physiological factors and how these interact with environments in families, neighborhoods, schools, and cultural groups.
At this time, we are not conducting any new “data collection” projects. Instead, we are focusing on data analysis and dissemination of results from several large ongoing collaborative longitudinal studies around the world on which Prof. Deater-Deckard serves as a co-investigator or consulting investigator:
Parenting Across Cultures/Parents and Adolescents Across Cultures (PAC) with Jennifer Lansford, Duke University, and many colleagues in nine countries
Neurobehavioral and Psychosocial Predictors of Health Risk Behaviors in Adolescence and Young adulthood (with Jungmeen Kim-Spoon & Brooks King-Casas and colleagues at Virginia Tech)
FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study (with Riikka Korja and colleagues at University of Turku, Finland)
Students who are interested in child/adolescent human development and are eager to learn and practice basic and advanced statistical data analysis skills are an ideal “fit” with IDDLab. Undergraduate research assistants (uRAs) work individually and in small teams to 1) learn data analysis and interpretation skills and then 2) apply those skills to answer specific questions and/or test hypotheses generated by the individual/team, and then 3) present results in conference presentations and journal research articles. uRAs work directly with a PhD student in the lab, and also have opportunity to meet with Prof. Deater-Deckard.
Participation includes 1) attending a weekly 1.25 hour in-person working meeting (time/loc TBA depending on everyone’s schedules; it may be in the late afternoon/early evening of a weekday), 2) attending a weekly 1.25 hour online synchronous working meeting on zoom (time TBA depending on everyone’s schedule; it may be in the late afternoon/early evening of a weekday), and 3) independent work time of 1+ hours per week (depending on the number of credit hours enrolled) on individual and team data analysis project(s).
Visit our lab webpages to learn more: https://websites.umass.edu/kdeaterdeck/
Priority will be given to Psychology majors. Students will gain invaluable data analysis/modeling, interpretation, and result dissemination skills while deepening their knowledge of human development across various aspects of psychology and neuroscience. IDDLab is deeply connected with many researchers within the US and globally, providing potential opportunities for networking with scholars in other countries and cultural contexts.