Center for Young Children (CYC)

Dr. Kelly Mix, Ph.D., is the Chair of the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1995 and has held faculty positions in the Department of Psychology at Indiana University and the College of Education at Michigan State University.  She has received research funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Spencer Foundation.  Her research is focused on the development of number concepts and mathematical reasoning, with a particular interest in the use of cognitive science principles to improve children's learning.

Dr. Kelly Mix’s Learning and Cognition Lab website. 

Dr. Melanie Killen, Ph.D., from the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, received her doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley. The topics that the lab studies include how children and adolescents’ reason, think about, and evaluate issues related to moral judgment, social cognition, social exclusion, intergroup attitudes, gender stereotypes, and peer relationships. She has a team of post-doctoral fellows, lab managers, doctoral students, and undergraduate research assistants who collaborate on many projects in these areas of research and application. In addition, the team is implementing a school-based program called Developing Inclusive Youth, designed to increase friendships across boundaries and help create inclusive classrooms for all children to thrive and succeed. 

Dr. Melanie Killen's Social and Moral Development Laboratory web site.

Dr. Lucas Butler, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology. He completed his Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University, and was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. His research program explores the nuanced interplay between two critical components of early learning: the capacity to learn important information about the world by making inductive inferences on the basis of limited evidence, and the ability to flexibly and selectively learn from others. He is working to understand how early cognitive development is fundamentally shaped both by the social context in which it occurs, and by children’s developing social cognitive capacities.

Dr. Richard Prather, Ph.D.,  is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology. Prior to joining the university of Maryland Dr. Prather received degrees from the University of Wisconsin – Madison (PhD) and MIT (BS). He investigates children's neurocognitive development with a primary focus on cognitive processes relevant to early mathematics learning. His research uses neuroimaging, computational modeling and behavioral experimentation to develop mechanistic explanations of behavior and insights into the relationship between children's behavior and neural activity. Additionally, he works in schools to develop interventions to improve children's mathematics performance. 

Dr. Lucas Butler and Dr. Richard Prather co-direct the Cognition and Development Lab.

Dr. Jeffrey Lidz, Ph.D., and Dr. Andrea Zukowski, Ph.D., from the Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park, have conducted research at the Center for Young Children for many years. Dr. Lidz received his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in 1996 and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in Paris. Dr. Zukowski received her PhD in 2001 from Boston University. Researchers in the Department of Linguistics focus on how children learn the structure of sentences in their language (syntax) and how sentence structure relates to meaning (semantics). An important component of this research involves the comparison of children learning a wide range of languages. Dr. Zukowski’s work also compares typically developing children’s language development with that of children with various developmental disorders, especially Williams Syndrome.

 Project on Children’s Language Learning web site.

Dr. Geetha Ramani, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, and received her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Ramani’s research focuses on how young children’s social interactions with adults and peers influence their cognitive development.  She is also interested in how play and informal learning activities can promote children’s thinking in the areas of mathematics, problem solving, and planning. 

Dr. Ramani's Early Childhood Interaction Lab web site.

Dr. Hedwig Teglasi, Ph.D., ABPP, a professor in the School Psychology Program within the Department of Counseling, Higher Education and Special Education at the University of Maryland, received her Ph.D. from Hofstra University. Dr. Teglasi and her students have conducted research at the CYC on children's temperament, social understanding, and social competence. Her interests are in how the interplay between children’s temperamental dispositions and exchanges with various environments impacts their learning and development.  

Dr. Hedy Teglasi’s Temperament and Narratives Lab .

Dr. Yi Ting Huang , Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at Harvard University and trained as a post-doctoral fellow in Cognitive Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Huang’s research focuses on how young language learners acquire the ability to coordinate linguistic representations during real-time comprehension. She explores this question by using eye-tracking methods to examine how the moment-to-moment changes that occur during processing influence the year-to-year changes that emerge during development.

Dr. Yi Ting Huang’s Language and Cognition Lab 

Dr. Rochelle Newman  is Chair of the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, as well as Associate Director of the Maryland Language Science Center. She also assisted in founding the UMD Infant and Child Studies Consortium and the UMD Autism Research Consortium. Her research examines speech perception and language acquisition. The focus of her work lies in how the brain recognizes words from fluent speech, especially in the context of loud environments, and how this ability changes over time.

Dr. Rochelle Newman’s Language Development and Perception Laboratories website. 

Dr. Tracy Riggins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland in the United States of America. She received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota; and postdoc training from University of California, Davis and the University of Maryland, School of Medicine. The goal of her research program is to provide better understanding of the neural bases of cognitive development, particularly in the domain of memory. The empirical research conducted in her laboratory involves both typically developing children and children at-risk for cognitive impairments and uses a combination of behavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging methodologies. She is currently serving as Secretary for the Cognitive Development Society and on the Editorial Board for Cognitive Development. 

Dr. Tracy Riggins's Neurocognitive Development Lab