Current CBD Trainees
Pre-doctoral students
(List of post-doctoral scholars)
Oscar A. Baldelomar (Psychology) is interested in the interplay of culture and identity development. He is currently working on the application of cultural consensus analysis, a qualitative-quantitative technique, to the study of group identity content across different cultural settings. His most recent project on this topic involved Bribri Indian, Black, and Mestizo adolescents from different regions in Costa Rica.
Faculty mentors: Patricia Greenfield
Background: Received B.A. in psychology, philosophy, and M.A. in psychology, from the California State University Los Angeles.
Mari Davies (Psychology) is studying the neural and behavioral correlates of nonverbal communication and social understanding in high-functioning children with autism.
Faculty mentors: Marian Sigman, Patricia Greenfield
Background: Received BA in Psychology from the University of Chicago.
David Frederick (Psychology) is finishing a series of six studies that combine to form an investigation of the cross-cultural variation, evolutionary underpinnings, and influence of hormones on women’s preferences for different male body types.
Faculty mentors: Martie Haselton, Clark Barrett
Background: Received BA from Beloit College, Department of Psychology
Matthew Gervais (Bio Anthropology) is interested in the neuroevolutionary foundations of norm internalization, and in how internalization creates psychological biases that feed back on cultural evolutionary processes.
Faculty mentors: Daniel Fessler, Patricia Greenfield
Background: Received a B.S. in Neuroscience and Anthropology from Binghamton University.
Amy Hubbard (Applied Linguistics) is studying the neural underpinnings of multisensory integration involved in human communication. Under the guidance of Dr. Mirella Dapretto in the UCLA Brain Mapping Center and John Schumann in Applied Linguistics, she is using functional MRI to investigate neural responses correlated with prosodically-coordinated gesture in first and second-language speakers of English.
Faculty mentors: John Schumann, Mirella Dapretto
Background: Received MA from The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Teaching English as a Second Language.
Virginia Huynh (Psychology) is interested in understanding social and cultural factors, such as educational contexts and parent-child relationships, that influence the development and academic adjustment of ethnic minority students.
Faculty mentors: Andrew Fuligni and Rashmita Mistry.
Background: Received BA in Psychology from Loyola Marymount University.
Adriana Manago (Psychology) is interested in combining developmental psychology and cultural anthropology to investigate gender identity development, gender socialization, and cultural constructions of gender.
Faculty mentors: Patricia Greenfield, Tom Weisner
Background: Received a B.S. in Journalism at West Virginia University and an M.A. in Experimental Psychology from San Jose State University.
Alethea Marti (Linguistic Anthropology) received her BA in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley, specializing in Computational Modeling, and minoring in Anthropology. She is interested in combining the anthropological study of narrative with psychological and linguistic research in order to understand how children and, especially, adolescents are trained into culturally appropriate social roles and responsibilities. She spent the past summer in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, learning Tzotzil, a Mayan language, and beginning her MA fieldwork among the Zinacanteco community.
Faculty mentors: Dr Elinor Ochs, Patricia Greenfield
Kristin McNealy (Neuroscience) is studying the role of developmental, social, and cultural variables in shaping the neural structures subserving language learning. She is a graduate student in the Interdepartmental Neuroscience PhD program and she works with Dr. Mirella Dapretto in the UCLA Brain Mapping Center, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). She plans to focus on the neural substrates of language learning and cognition and how they change across time from childhood through adolescence. Kristin is the recipient of a three-year NSF graduate research fellowship.
Faculty mentors: Mirella Dapretto, Cathy Sandhofer
Background: Received BS from Duke University, Department of Psychology
Elizabeth Reynolds (Neuroscience) spent the last year at UC Davis using functional MRI to compare language function of people with Down syndrome, Fragile X syndrome and typically developing participants. Liz's current research interests lie in the field of human social neuroscience. As a student in the Neuroscience IDP and a trainee in the Center for Culture, Brain and Development, she hopes utilize her background in functional neuroimaging and anthropology to explore how cultural experience effects basic cognitive processes.
Faculty mentors: Mirella Dapretto and Clark Barrett
Background: Received a B.S.c in Anthropology and Neuroscience from Emory University.
Lotte Thomsen (Psychology) is studying how different cultural practices in interpersonal relations shape psychological processes (such as self-enhancement and self-perception) and researching the role this plays for the experience and integration of Danish immigrant children and youth.
Faculty mentors: Patricia Greenfield, Alan Fiske
Background: Received MA in Clinical Psychology from University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Department of Psychology
Jennifer Vu (Graduate School of Education & Information Studies) will be looking at social outcomes in children who have suffered from traumatic brain injury, in particular focusing on friendship formation and mainenance. Also, I will look at parental/familial response to this injury and examine how they perceive this problem as well as how they respond, taking into consideration cultural differences of perception and negotiation.
Faculty Mentors: Robert Asarnow and Rashmita Mistry
Background: EdM, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Human Development and Psychology.
