Professor: Dr. Kelly Madole

Office: 232 Tate Page Hall

Telephone: 745-6475

E-mail: Kelly.Madole@wku.edu

Website: http://edtech.tph.wku.edu/~kmadole/

Course description: The goal of this course is to provide students with an opportunity for hands-on experience in developmental psychology research. The depth of the experience depends upon students current level of knowledge and the number of semesters they choose to devote to the learning experience. For each credit hour of independent study, students will be expected to spend 3-4 hours per week working in the lab.

Students will gain expertise in one or more areas of research, depending on their schedules and level of expertise:

1) Visual habituation measures of infant cognition: Using custom-designed software students will learn to use eye-fixation as a measure of infants' attention to a variety of stimuli. After sufficient training, students will be able to test infants on their own. This technique has been used most recently to assess infants' attention to same- and other-race faces.

2) Exploratory play as a measure of infant cognition: Students will use video-coding stations and a pre-existing coding scheme to learn to use infants' play behavior with objects as a measure of their attention to those objects. After training, students will be able to test infants using the exploratory play task. This technique is currently being used to assess infants' attention to color and shape in categorizing objects and to assess their attention to gender-stereotypical colors.

3) Developmental studies of social categorization. Students may assist graduate students in assessing adults' and childrens’ perception of social categories. This may be accomplished through pen-and-paper tasks or by using computer-based assessments.

4) General lab functioning: Students may be expected to assist in general lab functions such as maintaining the infants subject database, scheduling subjects and entering data.

5) Student-initiated research: Students with more than one semester's experience in the lab have the opportunity, if they desire, to implement their own research project under the supervision of Dr. Madole. This research should fit into the general procedures and theoretical framework existing in the lab.

Grading: Students will submit weekly reports of their work in the lab and/or a completed research paper. The final grade will be based written work and on performance in the lab. Conscientiousness, ability to take initiative and provide input are heavily weighted in the final grade.