The Human Development Group in the NACS program spans faculty in the Departments of Heaing and Speech Science, Kinesiology, Linguistics and Human Development.

Research interests include the development of brain-behavior relationships in motor skills, language, temperment, social behavior, and decision making. This wide range of interests provides students with the opportunity to explore a variety of developmental topics across a range of ages, from infancy through school-aged children. The unifying theme of this work is an emphasis on change over time, or the process of development.

The area of human development is unique in the extent to which it integrates basic and applied developmental research. The laboratories within the area have made a priority not only of conducting cutting-edge research on developmental process, but also of linking these findings with applied research on disorders and intervention.


Clark, Jane, Kinesiology

Dr.Clark's work focuses on understanding the development of movement control and coordination in motor skills. Her current work examines the role of sensory information in the development of upright posture and locomotion in infants. She also has an on-going project to study perception-action relationships with children who have motor coordination problems.

DeBoer, Tracy, Psychology

Fox, Nathan, Human Development

My research centers on the effects of early experience on brain development with special emphasis on the prefrontal cortex. I am interested in social and emotional development and study human infants and young children using electrophysiology(EEG and ERP).

Hatfield, Bradley, Kinesiology

The focus of Dr. Hatfield's program in exercise and sport psychology deals with both the health-related and performance-related aspects of humans in exercise/sport settings.

Killen, Melanie, Professor of Human Development and Director, Training Program in Social Development, Human Development

My research laboratory investigates social and moral cognition in children and adolescents. We study how children and adolescents evaluate straightforward and complex social and moral dilemmas and everyday issues, and how social experience is related to social cognition. In addition, we examine how culture influences social judgments, with collaborative projects in Korea, Japan, Israel, Jordan, Germany, Spain, and the U.K. Our topics include evaluations of racial exclusion, gender exclusion, intergroup bias, intergroup relationships, stereotypes, moral judgment, and social reasoning.

Newman, Rochelle, Director, Language Development & Perception Laboratories, Hearing and Speech Sciences

My research focuses on speech perception, word recognition, and language acquisition. More specifically, I am interested in questions such as how the brain recognizes words from fluent speech, the time course over which different stages of speech processing occur, and how listeners (especially infants) separate different streams of speech that occur at the same time.

Scholnick, Ellin, Sr VP Academic Affairs & Provost, Psychology

Her interest is in ways in which cognitive and linguistic development influence one another and in planning.

Taneyhill, Lisa, Animal and Avian Sciences

The Taneyhill lab studies the vertebrate neural crest, a transient population of migratory cells that ultimately differentiate to become a wide range of structures, including the peripheral nervous system, pigment cells, and the cranial bones and cartilage. Consequently, many human congenital and hereditary malformations (such as craniofacial abnormalities and heart defects), diseases and cancers result from aberrant neural crest development. Our lab uses molecular, cellular, and biochemical techniques to study neural crest formation in the chicken embryo to better understand overall animal growth and development.

Woodward, Amanda, Psychology

At the Maryland Infant Studies Laboratory we investigate babies' understanding of the social world. In particular, we study how babies make sense of other people's actions.

• Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Lab
• The Child Development Lab
• The Language Development Lab
• The Motor Development Lab