LIFE Fellows

University of Michigan Fellows: Biographical Sketches

Jessica Bernard

I am a doctoral student in the Cognition and Perception area of Psychology at the University of Michigan. I received my B.S. in Biological Psychology from Tufts University in 2007. I am interested in motor control and skill learning and how these abilities change with age. I am also interested in studying training interventions that will help older adults improve motor skills in a way that is beneficial in daily life. My current research is using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate motor cortical representations in both younger and older adults, and I plan to use TMS for future research related to motor control in combination with behavioral measures.

Jerel Calzo

I am currently a doctoral candidate in Developmental Psychology and a participant in the Development, Psychopathology, and Mental Health program at the University of Michigan. Prior to Michigan, I received Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and English at UCLA. Under the mentorship of Drs. L. Monique Ward and John Schulenberg, I employ both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine adolescent and emerging adult health and social development. My specific foci are developmental transitions, such as puberty and the transition out of high school, and the intersections of mental health, gender, sexual socialization, and sexual health. Ongoing projects focus on college students’ “hookup” experiences, the socialization of beliefs and attitudes about homosexuality, body image socialization during the pubertal shift, contributions of gender and sexual socialization to gender differences in psychopathology, and trajectories of sexual behavior and substance use throughout adolescence and emerging adulthood.

Kristin Flegal
University of Michigan Fellows' Speaker

I am currently a doctoral student in the Cognition & Perception area of the Psychology program at the University of Michigan. I earned my BS in Psychology at the University of Oregon, and then held a research assistant position at Oregon Health & Science University studying age-related changes in cognition. I am interested generally in the cognitive neuropsychology of aging and dementia, and I am currently engaged in research exploring the mechanisms of memory errors and distortions, with an eventual goal of helping identify cognitive strategies to optimize memory accuracy in daily life, especially as a component of successful aging.

Ashley Hazel

I am a PhD student in the School of Natural Resources and Environment and a training fellow in the Department of Epidemiology's Interdisciplinary Program in Infectious Diseases. Before coming to Michigan, I received my B.A. from Hunter College, CUNY in Anthropology and Biology and my M.Sc. in Human Evolution and Behavior at University College London. My current research takes an interdisciplinary approach--including epidemiological, ecological and anthropological methods--to studying the burden and risk of sexually transmitted disease (STD) among semi-nomadic herders in a southern African pastoral community. The Tjimba/Himba are subsistence-level herders living in northwestern Namibia, who have a high burden of sexually transmitted disease (STD), although they have remained isolated from the surrounding HIV/AIDS epidemic. Imminent development projects along the Namibian-Angolan border threaten the economic and cultural autonomy of the Tjimba/Himba, bringing greater pressure to sedentarize and increase contact with surrounding, westernized communities. My study will look at the association between ecological vulnerability and STD risk, while also trying to capture an ethnographic picture traditions and transitions in the Tjimba/Himba culture of health and healing.

Erin Howe

I am currently a doctoral student in the Literacy, Language and Culture program in the School of Education. Prior to my arrival at the University of Michigan, I completed my B.S. in child development and teaching and my M.A. in curriculum and instruction at Michigan State University. I also taught elementary school for 9 years in both the U.S. and in Germany. I am currently most interested in the development of bilingual children in a socio-cultural context. The issues surrounding children, parents, teachers and society as a whole are the subject of my current research project on young simulataneous bilinguals. I also work with Dr. Addison Stone on his project designed to investigate the interactions between parent and child dyads as they participate in problem solving activities.

Leah Kokinakis

I am currently a doctoral student in Psychology at the University of Michigan. Broadly speaking, I am interested in exploring globalization and modernity as contexts for psychological development. I am assuming a lifespan perspective to examine the role of individual and developmental differences in the impact of modernity and globalization on beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. One dimension of modernity and globalization is increasing cultural contact and interconnection, and my current study will examine the psychological processes involved in how exposure to “western” gender ideals (e.g., through media and migration) impacts beliefs and attitudes about gender in more “traditional” regions of India.

Xuezhao Lan

Upon completion of my BS at Beijing Normal University in Beijing, China, I was accepted as a doctoral student in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan. My research interests center on the development of self-regulation in a cross-cultural context, particularly comparisons of self-regulation skills of Chinese and Americans, which I believe to be important in explaining the Chinese/American academic achievement gap. I am also interested in applying statistical methodology in psychological research as I am working towards my statistics master's degree.

Jonathan Lane

I am a doctoral candidate in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan. Prior to Michigan, I received my B.A. in Psychology from Florida International University. Working with Drs. Henry Wellman, E. Margaret Evans, and Sheryl Olson, I study children's social-cognitive development and the consequences of such developments for children's everyday lives. One line of research explores how children's understanding of the mind (their Theory of Mind) enables them to consider the mental capacities of extraordinary beings (e.g., God, superheroes). A second line of work is focused on connections between developments in children's Theory of Mind, emotion understanding, and various aspects of moral cognition. I am also interested in how children consider intellectual and personality characteristics of informants when attempting to acquire new, accurate information.

Julie Maslowsky

I am interested in using both biological and psychosocial measures to delineate mechanisms of formation of psychopathology versus well-being in childhood and adolescence and in doing so, to gain knowledge for use in informing and formulating prevention and intervention programs for high-risk populations. I work with three mentors at the University of Michigan, John Schulenberg, Christopher Monk, and Daniel Keating. One current project focuses on the neurocognitive underpinnings of high-risk behavior during adolescence. A second project uses national survey data to examines patterns of comorbidity of mental health symptoms and substance use during adolescence. Finally, a third project examines the neural correlates of treatment for Generalized Anxiety Disorder using fMRI.

H. Scott McCann

I am a doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program at the University of Michigan. I spent my undergraduate years at Northwestern University, studying Psychology and Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences, earning my B.A. in 2004. Before starting the doctoral program, I also spent some time working in a child cognition lab at Northwestern, which sparked my interest in child development. My current interests are in literacy and language development; specifically, I am interested in how emergent literacy activities (such as parent-child book-reading) influence language development, as well as how native language affects the process of learning to read. I also place special emphasis on eye-tracking measures. Currently I am working on my dissertation, which is a study of how children learn words during parent-child book-reading. The primary measure of interest is how children who are successful in learning words this way scan picture book illustrations as compared to children who are not successful in this endeavor. These children will be compared to adult readers in an equivalent setting.

Nicky Newton

I am working towards a PhD in the Personality and Social Contexts area of psychology at the University of Michigan, having received a BA in psychology from University of California, Berkeley. My broad research interests are anchored in adult personality development across the lifespan, and how social change and major historical events influence that development. Of particular interest is how women's personalities and the social environment in which they live affect--and in turn, are affected by--their choices regarding family and career. Currently, I am studying the patterns of Erik Erikson’s epigenetic stages, particularly generativity, in the women of the Radcliffe Class of 1964 from their late twenties to early sixties.

Georges Potworowski

I have a master's degree in applied cognitive science from the University of Toronto and am just about finished with my PhD in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan. My research interests revolve around the gap between suboptimal and superior judgment and decision-making. In my dissertation research, I examine the facets of and contributors to indecisiveness. I also study how expert knowledge workers, such a physicians and managers, continue to learn and keep their practice up-to-date (and evidence-based) as their domains change.

Fernando Rodriguez, Jr.

I received my B.A. in psychology from California State University, Northridge, and am currently working towards a Ph.D. in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan. I primarily study children’s emergent literacy development in the context of shared storybook reading. Using eye-tracking methods, I am interested in capturing how parental reading styles influence what children visually attend to (print vs. text) as well as what they comprehend from these reading experiences (e.g., print concepts, story themes). I’m also interested in exploring the links between the home environment and children’s behavioral development, particularly among Latino families. I want to understand how the organizational patterns of the home (e.g., consistency of routines) relate to how Latino children self-regulate their behaviors. My final line of research focuses on studying college students’ critical thinking abilities. I’m interested in examining how college students critique research-based evidence, especially when the evidence is coupled with seductively deceptive information.