Category: Researcher’s Window

Taking a closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

This month, we are getting better acquainted with the research of Qingyang Liu, a Ph.D. Candidate at Syracuse University. She is an emerging scholar and a member of the publicity committee at SSHD.

1. What drew you to do work in your field?

My interest in human development began during my sophomore year as an undergraduate in China when I took a course on Developmental Psychology. I was captivated by the ideology of lifespan development, which examines growth and change from “womb to tomb.” This academic foundation inspired me to explore how humans develop and thrive over time. My interest deepened during an internship at a children’s hospital, where I closely observed children with both typical and atypical developmental trajectories. Witnessing the profound variations in their growth, I became especially interested in how young children learn to self-regulate their behaviors, emotions, and attention—skills that are critical for lifelong success. This fascination with self-regulation inspired me to investigate how these capacities develop, evolve, and mature across childhood. For me, childhood (ages 3–12) represents a high-potential developmental period filled with opportunities for growth, resilience, and flourishing. My multicultural and interdisciplinary background informs my research perspective, allowing me to view human development as a dynamic, evolving process shaped by contextual and relational factors. This framework has driven my commitment to advancing research that promotes equity and well-being across diverse populations.

2. Did you have any mentor or a researcher who had a substantial influence on your path or work?

Throughout my doctoral training journey, I have been extremely fortunate to have received the guidance of many incredible scholars and mentors who have profoundly shaped my scholarship, professional development, and personal growth. Dr. Rachel Razza has been instrumental in helping me thrive during my doctoral training, providing unwavering mentorship that has supported my development into an independent scholar. Her guidance has extended beyond academics, fostering my independent growth to navigate the complexities of research and academia. Dr. Gabriel Joey Merrin inspired me to embrace cutting-edge methodologies through countless collaborative working sessions that exemplified his passion for advancing the field. Dr. Sara Vasilenko has been a model for building and sustaining a research lab, showing me how to nurture a motivated and cohesive team while maintaining an inclusive and inspiring research environment. Dr. Xiafei Wang has deeply influenced my thinking about human development theories, encouraging me to engage with them critically and creatively during the writing process. Beyond these individuals, peer mentors like Dr. Ying Zhang have treated me as both a colleague and a friend, providing constructive feedback, encouragement, and support. Across all these relationships, my mentors have shown extraordinary generosity with their time and insights, consistently fostering my research, career development, and personal growth. Their mentorship has inspired me to model the same warmth, generosity, and support in guiding future students and colleagues, ensuring that I contribute to a culture of collaboration and inclusivity in human development research.

3. You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development and describe those in brief. 

Liu, Q., Merrin, G. J., Vasilenko, S. A., & Razza, R. A. (2024). Continuity and change in early material hardship domains on the development of children’s behavioral self-regulation in middle childhood. Children and Youth Services Review, 167.

Material hardship and behavioral self-regulation: One of my key contributions examines the continuity and change in material hardship domains (e.g., food, housing, bill-paying, utility, and medical) from postpartum to preschool years and their long-term impact on children’s behavioral self-regulation in middle childhood (Liu et al., 2024b). Using a nationally representative dataset, I utilized a person-centered approach to identify four distinct trajectories of material hardship with varying chronicity and changing patterns, demonstrating how persistent financial adversity significantly undermines children’s behavioral self-regulation development. This work emphasizes the urgent need for interventions targeting economically disadvantaged families, highlighting cultural and inclusion significance by addressing systemic inequities that disproportionately affect minoritized and underserved populations.

Liu, Q., Razza, R. A., Zhang, Y., & Merrin, G. J. (2024). Differential growth trajectories of behavioral self-regulation from early childhood to adolescence: Implication for youth domain-general and school-specific outcomes. Applied Developmental Science, 1-21.

Behavioral self-regulation promotes adolescents’ flourishing: Another key contribution explores longitudinal developmental trajectories of behavioral self-regulation from early childhood to adolescence and their unique associations with adolescent outcomes, such as positive functioning, delinquent behavior, school connectedness, and peer victimization (Liu et al., 2024a). This study employed a person-centered approach and identified four distinct behavioral self-regulation trajectories among underrepresented, minoritized children, including Early Developer (52.3%), Moderate Stable (37.4%), Lagged Developer (5.2%), and Regressor (5%). The Early Developer behavioral self-regulation trajectory showed the most protective outcomes, with high positive functioning and school connectedness and low delinquent behavior and victimization. Conversely, the Regressor behavioral self-regulation trajectory was associated with the riskiest outcomes. The findings underscore the importance of culturally sensitive, timely, and tailored interventions during the transition from early to middle childhood to enhance self-regulation, particularly for at-risk youth.

4. Your one wish for the study of human development

My wish is to advance the human development field beyond traditional, Western-centric frameworks, ensuring that research reflects the experiences and needs of diverse populations. By integrating voices and methodologies from underrepresented communities, cross-cultural studies, and multi-disciplines like public policy, sociology, public health, and education, researchers could generate more holistic and equitable insights to design interventions that address systemic disparities, ultimately fostering environments where all individuals can thrive.

5. A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

About the researcher

Qingyang Liu is a fifth-year PhD Candidate in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at Syracuse University and an incoming Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University in July 2025. Her research program focuses on promoting the developmental trajectory of self-regulation from early childhood through adolescence among racially/ethnically minoritized children living in poverty. Specifically, she investigates the influences of early poverty-related stressors (e.g., material hardship, household chaos), relational processes (e.g., parenting), and socio-environmental factors (e.g., neighborhood poverty/violence) that shape normal and atypical development of self-regulation in various ecological contexts. She received an M.S. in Educational Psychology and Methodology from the University at Albany, SUNY, a B.A. in Psychology from San Francisco State University, and a B.S. in Applied Psychology from Guangzhou Medical University.

Edited and launched by Yoko Yamamoto, Deborah J. Johnson, and Qingyang Liu

SSHD Publicity & Diversity Science Initiative Committee

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Taking a closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

 This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of Rick Settersten, Barbara Knudson Endowed Chair and Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at Oregon State University, and Head of the School of Social and Behavioral Health Sciences in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences.

1. What drew you to do work in human development?

   My mother will tell you that, even as a little kid, I was fascinated by time: I was too often worried about being on time or late. I loved to sit with boxes of old family photographs, intrigued by how people had changed as they’d grown older, and with old family members, asking questions about the past. My whole career would come to be driven by questions about how women and men experience time, age, and the life course.

2. Did you have any mentor or a researcher who had substantial influence in your path or work? Is there a significant moment or story that capsulizes the nature of that influence on your scholarship or professional journey?

In the spring of 1985, I fell in love: In an undergraduate course in adult development and aging, we watched an old film based on landmark Kansas City Study of Adult Life of the 1950s. There on screen was Bernice Neugarten, talking about ideas that had deeply resonated with me: That every society has scripts that define a “normal, expectable life.” That these scripts come with “age timetables” for major life transitions, and people know whether they are on-time or off-time. That in middle age, time seems to accelerate and people begin to think much more about how much time they have left.

I would eventually have the privilege of studying with Neugarten and her academic “daughter,” Gunhild Hagestad. Their influences are very present within me. Gunhild and I have over 30 years of shared history, she aging from her 40s to 70s and me from my 20s to 50s. I am now older than she was when we first met! We recently wrote a personal essay about aging in The Gerontologist.

I’ve been lucky to have many mentors, and each one has taught me something special. We need mentors at every point in our careers, not just when we are young.

3. You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development and describe those in brief.  What might be the cultural, inclusion or global significance of your work?

I am repeatedly struck by this observation: That in the United States, private resources and social relationships matter a great deal in determining people’s outcomes. It’s as true for old age as it is for childhood.

As a life course researcher, I am constantly confronted with the stark realities of advantage and disadvantage in our nation, and with how much these accumulate over life and across generations. And yet, I’m also witness to the fact that human beings can be extraordinarily resilient in the face of adversity, and that people with privileged beginnings don’t always escape negative outcomes.

There’s a silver lining: Many of the things that create disadvantage and adversity are malleable through interventions and through changes in institutions and policies. And as researchers, it is within our reach to improve human lives and social worlds.

4. If you had just one wish for the study of human development, what would it be? How would it advance the field? 

Ha! I love it that you’re asking that question. Megan McClelland and I devoted a special issue of Research in Human Development to it a few years ago.

My wish is that developmental science will get better at revealing the intensity and complexity of human life as a social experience. Life’s strongest storylines are punctuated by and enmeshed with other people. The principle of “linked lives” is repeated as a mantra in life course literature. And yet this stands in direct contrast to the state of research, which largely treats individuals as if they exist in isolation of others. To simply say that lives are “linked” says nothing about their nature, length, purposes, or consequences. We need to do better in revealing these things.

5. A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing.

From Maya Angelou, who said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” That’s how I’ve tried to live and lead.

About the researcher

Dr. Rick Settersten is Barbara Knudson Endowed Chair and Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at Oregon State University, and Head of the School of Social and Behavioral Health Sciences in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences. He is the founding director of the Hallie Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families at OSU and was a member of the MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy. He received his doctorate in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education in Berlin

Edited and launched by Yoko Yamamoto, Deborah J. Johnson, and Qingyang Liu

SSHD Publicity & Diversity Science Initiative Committee

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Taking a closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

 

This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of Dr. Deborah Johnson, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and Director of the Diversity Research Network at Michigan State University.

1. What drew you to do work in human development?

The civil rights and Black power movements resided in the backdrop of my childhood on Chicago’s south side.  I witnessed struggle and change. One of the core issues of that time was how to achieve widespread social change for my generation and the generations to follow.  Among the many responses was, education. To equalize education was the pebble in the pool reverberating throughout American society. When I arrived at the University of Chicago I was clear, I would be an educator, and the Human Behavior and Institutions major (later Human Development) seemed the right opportunity at the right time.  Plunging into the major, I learned that not only was the problem more complex and systemic, but the answers were also multilevel and systemic.  Human Development as a contextual systems approach provided the greatest potential to continue my queries, wrestling with the complex nature of my own community and others like mine. In my third year of undergraduate education it was again clear, in order to impact widespread social change the work that I did had to be at the foundation of what others did who served children.  My work should be develop to influence change in how professionals delivered critical information and trained young children in schools.  As such, I imagined many pools in which to drop my pebble. These early goals, though perhaps naïve, transformed over time to my deepest motivations.

2. Did you have any mentor or a researcherwho had substantial influence in your path or work? Is there a significant moment or story that capsulizes the nature of that influence on your scholarship or professional journey?

There are many amazing mentors in my career path. At Cornell University in HDFS, Leachim Semaj, a Piagetian scholar from Rutgers, and Bill Cross, a social psychologist from Princeton both influenced my scholarship in ethnic-racial identity development of children, each having very different perspectives on the process theoretically. At a conference as a master’s student I requested a meeting with Diana Slaughter (Kotzin), she energetically took me by the hand and introduced me to every significant scholar of color at that conference. She then made the observation that “she was old enough to be my mother,” in the great tradition of German academic mentors referred to as “doctor-mothers” and “doctor-fathers”. She had claimed in one moment that she would be my career-long mentor.  Neither of us knew at the time but it was truer than anything I’ve known before or since. She meant that she was committed to teaching me what she knew and to supporting my career through the duration of hers.  I flourished under her candor and tutelage; I learned the craft. And I learned how to carry the future of others with me to open doors.

3. You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development and describe those in brief.  What might be the cultural inclusion or global significance of your work?

Racial Socialization. Using Comer data from 22 urban schools in Chicago we analyzed the racial coping data of 672 African American children in elementary school over a 4 year period. We were able to demonstrate that varying diversity in student contexts elevated some coping strategies over others and that our racial coping strategies mapped onto constructs of instrumental and emotion-focused coping emanating from stress theory. Extracting a subset of children who were interviewed at grade 1 and grade 3, we learned, not surprisingly, of developmental elements of racial coping. Children matured in their racial coping shifting away from adult support to more independent strategies and non-confrontational racial coping.

Sudanese Refugee Youth. We have followed a group of unaccompanied Sudanese refugee minors (sometimes referred to as “Lost Boys”) for over 15 years. Among the many findings are those related to identity and adjustment, and those pertaining to the collective use of voice among the refugee youth. There were constant well-meaning demands placed upon the youth to tell their stories of escaping war and displacement. To avoid being re-traumatized they learned to tell a collective story (bits and pieces of all their lives) that both protected them and bridged them to the communities where they were resettled. Girls in this group were less able to use this device when not in the company of boys and this left them more vulnerable. An associated qualitative finding was discovering the vulnerability of the refugee girls to community sanctioned interpersonal violence from other Sudanese, including, male elders, relatives, and partners.

4. Your one wish for the study of human development

The social sciences continue to suffer from the development of parallel schools of thought, language, and research production in some areas where few cross connections exist.  For instance, prescribed camps of scholarship on social identity and ethnic racial identity rarely cite one another’s work. They exist in parallel but often do not cross dimensions. Yet these fields of inquiry and theory are intricately interrelated. Admittedly, there are many social, historical, and conceptual reasons for this parallel development that align with schools of thought. Cross-national and cross-disciplinary collaborations seem to aid us in lessening these kinds of divides. My wish for human development is that we resolve areas of dissonance and generate more of these beneficial cross-connections to advance the field globally. In my lifetime, increasing the permeability of these two lanes of scholarship and scholars would signal a critical evolution in the field.

5. A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing.

In a weak moment during my graduate program, I once asked a mentor, “Do you think I can complete this program?”  The rejoinder came back from Dr. Josephine Allen, “You’ve asked the wrong question, is your desire to complete the program?”

About the researcher

Dr. Deborah J. Johnson's research explores racially and culturally related development, parental racial socialization and coping, cultural adjustment from early childhood through emerging adulthood, in both domestic and international children and youth.  Current work focuses on the influence of early bias preparation and coping at the intersection of gender and race among African American and Latina College women, and the impact on their well-being and school performance. Additionally, she studies cultural adjustment and identity development among unaccompanied Sudanese refugee minors and majors, and in international settings with Indigenous Australian youth and, core collaboration on Roma youth in Europe. She is also Director of the Diversity Research Network, a faculty serving entity under the auspices of MSU’s Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives.

Edited and launched by Yoko Yamamoto, Deborah J. Johnson, and Qingyang Liu

SSHD Publicity & Diversity Science Initiative Committee

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Taking a closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of Dr. Juan Del Toro. He is Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

1. What drew you to do work in your field?

Initially, the mentors. As an undergraduate, I read many of my mentors’ studies, and I was inspired by the issues they were addressing. Their mentorship style also made me feel like I could contribute to the change that they wanted out of their research. By doing research, I learned about the importance that early life experiences can have on individuals’ life courses, and I slowly began identifying as a developmental psychologist because I firmly believed in the importance of research in this area. That is not to say that other topics and fields are unimportant! To address racism, we need research via all lenses, including social psychology, sociology, public health, etc. However, where I feel like I can contribute is from my training in human development.

2. Did you have any mentor or a researcher who had a substantial influence on your path or work?

My first memorable experience was with my undergraduate mentor, Dr. Desdamona ‘Desi’ Rios, whom I met during my second year in college, and I was majoring in chemistry at the time. We met at a first-generation welcome event, and Desi shared that she received her PhD in Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan. After her introduction, I approached her and naively asked, “You can get a PhD in that?” She responded that she did and that she was building her research lab, and I followed up with, “You have a lab?”, as I didn’t grow up learning that research could be extended to the social sciences. Thereafter, I began working with her on research, which was a defining point for my current career as an assistant professor of psychology.

3. You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development and describe those in brief. 

There are two lines of work that I'm thrilled to work on, and they both pertain to resilience among adolescents of color. In one of my line works, I'm working to illustrate that the intended resilience tied to messages that youth receive about their race/ethnicity (i.e., racial/ethnic socialization) may not always be apparent in psycho-social measures but rather in distal indicators of well-being that can be captured in biological indicators of their health. I have been titling this phenomenon as "Hidden Resilience" because biomarker indicators of well-being are not visible to the naked eye but are rather hidden "underneath the skin." In a second line of work, I have been working to illustrate that messages from different agents of racial/ethnic socialization do not carry equal value, but rather racial/ethnic socialization from teachers may instill adolescents with more resilience than that from other agents (e.g., parents, peers). As most readers may recall from their own upbringings or even witnessing their teenage children's experiences, teenagers have a lot of pressure to be independent and autonomous outside the family, making them less inclined to want to listen and reach out to their parents for support. Instead, teenagers are more likely to lean on others, such as close adult figures in school, for support, and I'm finding that this support is promotive and protective in the context of racial/ethnic discrimination.

4. Your one wish for the study of human development

One thing that I wish and am working to encourage is for the field to think of human development at the population level. As a field, human development mostly relies on individual-level data to make inferences about issues, like racism, affecting populations. However, the way to challenge racism is by targeting policies that perpetually support and reinforce racist cultures and practices. To change policy, we need large and population level data to make strong inferences about the particular policies that sustain racism.

5. A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing

“If you’re not getting rejected, then you’re not aiming high enough.”

About the researcher

Dr. Juan Del Toro is Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His primary appointment is in the Personality, Individual Differences, and Behavioral Genetics (PIB) program. He also holds affiliate faculty appointments in the Clinical Science and Psychopathology Research program, the Institute of Child Development, and the Minnesota Population Center. I received my Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology with a concentration in Advanced Quantitative Analyses from New York University, and he completed my postdoctoral training at the University of Pittsburgh. As a developmental psychologist, he examines how specific perpetrators of ethnic-racial discrimination (e.g., peers, school adults, and law enforcement) and ethnic-racial socialization (e.g., parents, school adults, and peers) shape children’s life course trajectories. The goal of specifying perpetrators is to inform setting-specific policies and interventions working to improve the well-being of all youth.

Edited and launched by Yoko Yamamoto, Deborah J. Johnson, and Qingyang Liu

SSHD Publicity & Diversity Science Initiative Committee

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Taking a closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of Dr. Hyun-Kyung You. She is a Professor in Child Development at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.

1. What drew you to do work in your field?

My interest in human development started with the introductory psychology class, about thirty years ago. As I freshly arrived in a predominantly white, small college town in the United States, I was struck by the importance and problems of race(s). How young do children become aware of other races? How early do children develop racial prejudice? Not only was I exploring these ideas in the literature, but also encountering them in my interactions with other immigrants and their children.

2. Did you have any mentor or a researcher who had a substantial influence on your path or work?

There are a few inspiring teachers and mentors in my professional and scholarly journey. Dr. Lori McGraw challenged yet nurtured me throughout my doctoral program, as we engaged in endless discussions on the intersectionality of motherhood, disability, class, and culture. Dr. Sharon Rosenkoetter offered me many opportunities, from teaching young children to working with early childhood leaders.

3. You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development and describe those in brief. 

My scholarship has centered on individuals’ agentic relationship with their social and cultural contexts. We constantly negotiate who we are, what roles are salient to us, and how we create and maintain relationships through resistance and conformation; disagreement and agreement. I particularly saw this dialect exchange in my qualitative study on Korean mothers’ understanding of themselves and their children with autism. While it was challenging for these women to resist Korean culture’s “good” mother ideology, they reconstructed the meaning of “normal” childhood.

I am currently interested in transnational habitus (Nukaga, 2012) and transnational family caregiving among immigrants. This exploration also acknowledges human development in relation to spaces and times.

4. Your one wish for the study of human development

I think that more collaborations across cultures and disciplines would advance our understanding of human development. Perhaps SSHD will be a great platform for those.

5. A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” (Paulo Coelho, the Alchemist)

About the researcher

Hyun-Kyung You is Professor in the Child Development Department at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. Hyun-Kyung’s research focuses on the dialectic interactions between individuals’ agency and sociocultural contexts. Particularly, she is interested in family life in relation to child’s disability, motherhood in cultural contexts, and intergenerational relationships and caregiving in transnational families. Hyun-Kyung also has broadened her research interest into understanding the BTS fandom, ARMY (Adorable Representative MC of Youth) through human development and family studies lens. She is a recipient of 2012 Jessie Bernard Outstanding Research Paper Award from a Feminist Perspective, National Council on Family Relations. Hyun-Kyung teaches various courses on early childhood development and practices, families and children with disabilities, and families in community and cultural contexts.

Edited and launched by Yoko Yamamoto, Deborah J. Johnson, and Qingyang Liu

SSHD Publicity & Diversity Science Initiative Committee

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Taking a closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of the current President-Elect of SSHD, Dr. Christia S. Brown. She is a Professor of Developmental Psychology and Associate Dean of Inclusive Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky.

1. What drew you to do work in your field?

I first became interested in human development as an undergraduate in a Developmental Psychology class. We had an assignment to administer a Piagetian conservation task to a child. I tested my young cousin, who failed it beautifully. It was the first time I really paid attention to the ways in which children thought differently about the world around them than adults. Around the same time, I also started tutoring children from low-income families who attended a very underfunded elementary school. It was clear to me that the children I worked with were being influenced by the school they attended, the neighborhood they lived in, and the constraints their parents faced. I became interested in how these foundational experiences shaped the rest of their lives.

2. Did you have any mentor or a researcher who had a substantial influence on your path or work?

My graduate advisor, Rebecca Bigler, had a profound influence on my path, both as a researcher and as a person. Having an outspoken feminist mentor who is a brilliant researcher taught me much more than research. I was taught to work hard, ask tough questions, and be brave in the face of the White patriarchal power structures that devalued research on children's gender and ethnic stereotypes. It was a powerful lesson that taught me that research on human development can be focused on issues of social justice and that developmental scientists can ask thoughtful research questions that are both rigorous and consistent with our moral values of equity and inclusion. On a personal level, as a first-generation college student, I was really lucky to have a mentor who valued their family, who modeled for me how to be an academic and a parent, and who supported me as a complete person. I have tried to do the same thing for all of my students.

3. You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development and describe those in brief. 

Much of my research has examined how children and adolescents perceive gender and ethnic discrimination. One of the most important findings shows that children in elementary school can perceive gender and ethnic discrimination from their peers and teachers, and this can negatively affect children's attitudes about their academic abilities. Importantly, though, children’s burgeoning ethnic and gender identities can help buffer some of the sting of discrimination.  As part of this work, we have highlighted the importance of the early development of ethnic identity, among both ethnic minority children (to withstand discrimination) and White children (to understand, and hopefully stop, discrimination). We have also shown that children whose teachers and schools explicitly value diversity experience less peer discrimination and feel more positively about their ethnicity (and feel more positively about school) than children whose teachers are indifferent about diversity. This work suggests that schools, instead of ignoring ethnic diversity, should help ethnic minority children feel proud of their ethnicity, show children a range of ethnically diverse role models, and reinforce treating each other with respect.

4. Your one wish for the study of human development

I wish that more research on human development was put into the hands of people who could use it. There is so much misinformation out there. I wish researchers across the span of human development could translate key research findings to the public. The work we all do is so important to improving people's quality of life, but it often only lives in journal articles and academic books.

5. A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing

Put your head down, work hard, live the life you want, and ignore everything else.

About the researcher

Christia Spears Brown, Ph.D., is the Professor of Developmental Psychology and Associate Dean of Inclusive Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky. Her research focuses on children’s understanding of discrimination, the development of stereotypes and group identity, and the impact of discrimination and stereotypes on academic outcomes. As an intergroup researcher, her work spans gender and gender identity, ethnicity, immigration status, and economic inequality. In addition to peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, she has written three books, one for an academic audience, Discrimination in Childhood and Adolescence, and two for general audiences, Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue and Unraveling Bias. She is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science; has been a Society for Research in Child Development Scholar-in-Residence; and is an Associate Editor for British Journal of Developmental Psychology. She is committed to “giving science away” to help improve the lives of all children and adolescents, and therefore regularly speaks with parent groups, schools, toy and media companies, and professional organizations about reducing the impact of stereotypes, is regularly featured in national media outlets, and has served as an expert witness for the ACLU on cases of gender discrimination in schools.

Edited and launched by Yoko Yamamoto and Deborah J. Johnson

SSHD Publicity & Diversity Science Initiative Committee

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Taking a closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of Dr. Yao Zheng, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta.  

1. What drew you to do work in human development?

I took a course on Lifespan Development by Dr. Yanjie Su (one of the few professors offering true lifespan perspective in China, as opposed to conventional Developmental Psychology that typically focuses on childhood and adolescence) in my sophomore year, and was mesmerized by the beauty of human development from womb to tomb. I am particularly fascinated by adolescent development. To me, adolescence (10–25 years) represents an exciting developmental period with unlimited opportunities for the life ahead of us. Studying adolescence is also one way to remind myself of feeling “young” or “youthful.” My international and interdisciplinary educational background largely shapes my perspectives towards my research program. Human development is such a complex process, and we ought to use different ways to understand it, especially in different ecological contexts.

2. Did you have any mentor or a researcher who had substantial influence in your path or work?

I have many mentors to thank for my career path thus far. I especially want to thank (in no particular order) Drs. Peter Molenaar, Robert Plomin, Bob McMahon, Mara Brendgen, Frank Vitaro, Nancy Galambos, and Yanjie Su. Besides their impressive research career that constantly inspires my own research, I have learned tremendously through their mentorship the importance of being a good researcher as well as a good mentor. They share several common mentoring styles that I greatly appreciate: 1) treat me more as a colleague than a trainee, 2) are very generous with their time and provide detailed, constructive, and timely feedback, 3) are always warm and supportive of my research and career, and will go out of their way when I need help.  

3. You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development and describe those in brief. 

Zheng, Y., Rijsdijk, F., Pingault, J. B., McMahon, R. J., & Unger, J. B. (2016). Developmental changes in genetic and environmental influences on Chinese child and adolescent anxiety and depression. Psychological Medicine, 46(9), 1829–1838.

Opposite to the common findings using Western samples, genetic influences on anxiety and depressive symptoms decreased to negligible in middle adolescence in the Chinese sample, while shared environmental influences (i.e., shared family, community, and neighborhood environmental experiences that make family members similar to each other) increased, and explained the most of the continuity of anxiety and depressive symptoms over time. This study represents the first and thus far the only endeavor that systematically elucidates genetic and environmental contributions to the longitudinal development of depressive and anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents using a non-European or non-North American sample. The novel findings highlight the salient and pronounced role of shared environmental experiences during the transition period of adolescence in non-Western societies such as China.

Zheng, Y., & McMahon, R. J. (2019). Lability in parental warmth in childhood: Antecedents and early adolescent outcomes. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 1–13.

This study examined, for the first time, the role of long-term within-person fluctuations in parental warmth throughout early childhood and its links with psychopathology and social competence in early adolescence. Specifically, a unique feature of the changes in parenting that describes within-person fluctuations in parenting practices over time –lability–is linked with adolescent adjustment, above and beyond the general level and developmental trends (i.e., increase or decrease or stable) of parenting. The findings showed that greater lability in parental warmth from kindergarten to grade 5 was linked with more internalizing problems in grade 7 and lower social competence in grade 6. Moreover, lability partly explained the effects of SES on social competence in boys but not in girls, whereas the indirect effects of SES on internalizing problems through lability were significant in girls but not in boys.

• Your current project and/or key projects

I have three current and active research projects: 1) parenting behaviors and parent–adolescent relationships in daily life, which follows 100 parent–adolescent dyads daily consecutively over a month, both pre- and during the COVID pandemic. 2) transition to university, which follows approximately 300 university students daily consecutively over a month in the freshman year and again in the junior year to examine their socioemotional and behavioral adjustment during this transition period. 3) assessing impulsivity, sensation seeking, and emotion regulation among adolescents and young adults and their links to emotional and behavioral problems.

• Contributions of your projects/research to the study of human development.

All my three research projects focus on short-term within-person developmental dynamics in daily contexts, as well as their changes and links to long-term developmental outcomes at multiple timescales. Human development happens continuously in every second and minute. A growing body of research has shown that developmental dynamics on these micro timescales are not necessarily equivalent to long-term developmental processes on macro timescales (e.g., years). Disentangling relatively stable between-person differences from within-person fluctuations at multiple levels of analysis during childhood and adolescence represents a major thrust of my research program.

4. Your one wish for the study of human development

We need to promote a more diverse, inclusive, and global developmental science, especially research from the Majority World.

5.  A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing

“You can either travel or read, but either your body or soul must be on the way.” — Roman Holiday

About the researcher

Dr. Zheng is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta in the Developmental Science area. He was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at Simon Fraser University and University of Quebec at Montreal. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Human Development and Family Studies, as well as a M.A.S. in Applied Statistics, from the Pennsylvania State University. He received his B.S. in Psychology from Yuan Pei Honors College, Peking University. During graduate school, he also visited the Department of Developmental Psychology at Friedrich-Schiller University Jena and the Social, Genetic, & Developmental Psychiatry Center at King’s College London as a visiting graduate student. His research focuses on the development and prevention of child and adolescent behavioral and emotional problems with the ultimate goal of informing intervention to promote physical and mental well-being. Specifically, he investigates the influences of family and peer processes that shape normal and atypical development at multiple levels of analysis and timescales in various ecological contexts.

Edited and launched by Deborah J. Johnson & Yoko Yamamoto
SSHD Publicity & Diversity Science Initiative Committee

Taking a closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of Dr. Radosveta Dimitrova, a developmental and cross-cultural psychologist at Stockholm University.  

1. What drew you to do work in human development?

I think most developmental scientists like me are fascinated by the opportunity to uncover and research intriguing aspects of human development to find ways of sustaining positive development, thriving and success in various populations. Researching underserved, underprivileged, and marginalized communities using global, international, and cross-cultural perspectives has been of the utmost importance in my work. I am deeply grateful and fortunate to be in a privileged position that allows me a modicum of academic freedom and to learn from culturally diverse populations globally despite professional challenges.

2. Did you have any mentor or a researcher who had substantial influence in your path or work?

I have been honoured and grateful to have had many exceptional mentors. The first and most significant person is Cynthia Garcia Coll who mentored me when she was at Brown University. She was always unconditionally supportive in the midst of challenges and hard times. Fons van de Vijver at Tilburg University, the Netherlands - an exceptional scholar and mentor, recently deceased, was another role model and academic exemplar with his Dutch modesty, being truly supportive and always available for his collaborators. Both Cynthia and Fons deeply inspired my work on Roma minority populations. They helped me persist in this line of research that has brought me many professional achievements and rewards. I have been privileged as a mentee of Laura Ferrer-Wreder at Stockholm University, Sweden - a leading scholar in acculturation, prevention, and intervention. Laura is a true friend, and as a collaborator, exceptionally reliable, competent, and professional. Through my work and international travels across the globe, I have been able to connect with many other great folks from multiple disciplines who also deeply inspired my work.

3. You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development and describe those in brief. 

Most of my projects were quite global and multidisciplinary in nature, involving 30 to 70 countries in major continents across the globe. Grounded in the traditions of developmental science, some of these projects focused on diversity and acculturation using a global perspective; ethnic minority (Roma) youth across Europe; emerging adulthood, Positive Youth Development (PYD) across cultures, etc. These projects have allowed me to expand existent knowledge to relevant aspects of human development and thriving globally and in highly vulnerable populations across culturally diverse settings. It is hard to summarize a major finding from all projects. But in addition to the advancement of theoretical and empirical knowledge related to human development, measurement, policy, and practice in global contexts, when looking at under-researched contexts and populations, the mainstream theory and research may seem inapplicable as new avenues with unexpected insights emerge. 

4. Your one wish for the study of human development

I wish there was global equity with resourceful and supporting contexts for people to thrive in their societies; this applies to both the populations we have been investigating as scientists and our fellow colleagues and scholars who may lack such contexts to study human development.

5.  A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing

“You are a blessing in my life”

About the researcher Dr. Radosveta Dimitrova is a developmental and cross-cultural psychologist with main research interests on positive development, acculturation, migration, identity, indigenous and vulnerable ethnic minority (Roma) communities, and adaptation of measures for use in different cultures. She has research and teaching experience in leading universities across the globe and international collaborations in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, North and South America. She has primarily published in human development, cross-cultural and international psychology, emerging adulthood, child and family studies, and assessment by also serving major organizations and editorial boards of leading journals in other fields. In various global collaborations and organizations, she has systematically researched and provided service to vulnerable populations and fellow scholars in underprivileged contexts.

Edited and launched by Deborah J. Johnson & Yoko Yamamoto
SSHD Publicity & Diversity Science Initiative Committee

Taking a closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of Dr. Meenal Rana, Associate Professor of Child Development at the Humbolt State University.

1. What drew you to do work in human development?

I was always fascinated by human uniqueness, diversity of experiences, resilience in face of adversities, and development of self. The quest to study these concepts scientifically and systematically drew me to the field of human development.

2. Did you have a mentor or researcher who had substantial influence on your path or on your work?

I have been very fortunate and grateful to have extraordinary mentors in my life, such as Drs. Tom Luster, Deborah J Johnson, Desiree Qin, and Miles McNall. I learned many important lessons during my interactions with them. I highlight a few here.

I would like to honor the memory of Dr. Luster’s mentorship, who unfortunately passed away in 2009 during my doctoral studies. I had come to believe I was the only student that he had until his funeral when so many of his students shared similar experiences to mine. I was astonished to realize that he gave each of his students undivided attention such that each one of us felt special (at the time, he had 19 doctoral and even more masters students). As a faculty in the department of Child Development at Humboldt State University, I have adopted his model of being fully present for my students and colleagues. He encouraged me to ask four questions for the betterment of my scholarship: “What is the research question?” “Why am I interested?” “How am I going to answer the question?” and finally “So what?” The “so what” part is important for mainly two reasons: 1) Is it novel? 2) How it is going to benefit the field?

Drs. Johnson and Qin emphasized the importance of creating a niche of like-minded scholars and professionals. Their work on social justice issues, advocacy for children and families of minoritized backgrounds, and decolonizing human development inspire my current scholarship and advocacy. Both of them work with research teams of brilliant graduate and undergraduate students, modeling the multi-tiered mentoring and connecting them with their alumni like myself and others in the field. Dr. McNall, who is a community researcher shared many important lessons but the one that stuck with me the most is, “As a researcher, always approach the communities with the utmost respect. Ask positive questions that highlight their strengths instead of trying to find problems.” 

3.  You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development and describe those in brief.

My research, local and international, includes identity development among minoritized adolescents and young adults, including Sikh youth in immigrant families, Latina mothers in college, and school youth in India. During my graduate program, I have worked with Sudanese Lost Boys—the unaccompanied refugee minors who were resettled in Michigan. I utilize lifespan, ecological, intersectional, and resilience frameworks in my work. Most recently, I am drawn to trauma research, which I incorporate in my teaching and advising/mentoring (Dr. Bruce Perry’s and Dr. José Bowen’s scholarship). The three areas of my scholarship include:

1. Examination of ethnoreligious identity formation among Sikh immigrant youth and their parents' socialization practices: Due to their outward identity markers (i.e., turban and beard), Sikh men and boys are subjected to religion-based discrimination and harassment in workplaces and schools that has implications for ethnoreligious identity formation. Since the 9/11 attack, increased Islamophobia and mistaken identities have affected the health of both Sikh and Muslim communities in the United States. Sikh immigrant families negotiate their ethnoreligious identities and adapt their socialization practices by balancing safety and enculturation processes. Sikh immigrant communities provide socio-cultural and human capital to build ethnoreligious resilience and to support the family’s socialization processes.   
2. Youth-adult partnerships, identity exploration among youth through engagement in environmental and social justice issues in India: This project started as a collaboration with a non-profit organization in India, Environment and Social Research Organization (ESRO), where we utilized the Youth-Adult Partnerships (Y-AP) model to engage school youth in India. In collaboration with adults, youth were given the responsibility to create awareness in their communities about various social and environmental issues. I provided consultation on various programs, ideas on activities, and different models of engaging school youth in these issues; the ESRO team implemented the Y-AP model in 18 different schools over 2 years. We learned that Youth-Adult partnerships (Y-AP), especially through collaborative decision-making in community work, promoted a sense of self-efficacy, responsibility toward their communities, civic engagement, academic outcomes, and positive identity among youth. Based on this foundational work, in 2018, with a federal grant, I created a collaborative partnership (interdisciplinary, intercultural, and international) among Humboldt State University, Lady Irwin College, New Delhi, and three non-profit organizations in India. Seven students and two faculty members from HSU traveled to India and collaborated with the Indian partners (8 college students from India, faculty partners, and NGO partners) to work in two rural communities of North India.
3. Resilience, identity exploration, and belongingness among Latina student parents in higher education: Utilizing the lifespan perspectives, intersectionality, and resilience frameworks, the current study examined the experiences of eight Latina mothers, between ages 22 to 29 years. The Latino population is growing exponentially in the United States, more specifically in the state of California. While there are many studies undertaken on Latino students on campus, fewer studies focused on Latina student mothers in higher institutions. In this research, Latina student mothers on our college campus identified risk and protective factors while navigating their education and motherhood. Our study contributes to the limited studies on student parents, more specifically Latina student mothers.

4.  Your one wish for the study of human development

I would like to see the field of human development continuing to become more inclusive with diverse worldviews, voices, frameworks, and methodologies. We have made progress over the years (e.g., Diversity Science Initiative) but we have a long way to go to enrich the field.

5.  A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing.

Mentoring is a reciprocal process in which both, the mentor and the mentee, engage in a mutually respectful and meaningful relationship, remain curious, learn from one another, and agree to disagree--a creative space for the mentee to shape their unique path and continue this same obligation for future generations. 

About the researcher

Dr. Meenal Rana is an Associate Professor in the Department of Child Development at Humboldt State University. Rana regularly teaches many classes in growth and development including Life Span Development, Methods of Observation, Parent-Child Relationships, Children and Stress, and Structure and Content of Children’s thinking, Professional Development, and Academic Internships. Prior to her appointment at Humboldt, Dr. Rana was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Education and Human Development at Brown University (2012-2013). She received a Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from Michigan State University. Dr. Rana’s research interests include 1) examination of ethnoreligious identity formation among Sikh immigrant youth and their parents' socialization practices, 2) youth-adult partnerships, identity exploration among youth through engagement in environmental and social justice issues, specifically in India, and 3) resilience, identity exploration, and belongingness among student parents in higher education. In her leisure time, she likes to read, cook, and walk in the magnificent Redwood forests.  

Edited and launched by Deborah J. Johnson & Yoko Yamamoto

SSHD Publicity Committee

Taking a closer look at research and experiences of SSHD members

～Researcher’s Window～

This month we are getting better acquainted with the research of Jen Agans, Assistant Professor of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management at the Pennsylvania State University.

1. What drew you to do work in human development?

I originally wanted to work directly with youth as a middle school teacher or afterschool program provider. Based on my own experiences participating in and coaching youth circus programs (yes, I can juggle and ride a unicycle), I knew it was possible for these contexts to help youth thrive and I wanted to be part of that. However, I caught the research bug as an undergraduate psychology major at Macalester College, and asked a professor what might account for the positive outcomes I’d seen in youth circus programs. She told me to go get a PhD and find out myself, so here I am.

2. Did you have a mentor or researcher who had substantial influence on your path or on your work?

Two mentors stand out as particularly influential in my work, one practitioner and one researcher. Jackie Davis was my first circus coach, and became a mentor and friend as I grew up and began coaching and working with youth myself. It’s thanks to her that my research is grounded in lived experiences of positive youth development in action. It’s thanks to Richard Lerner, my doctoral advisor, that I know how to conduct that research and situate it within the theoretical frameworks of human development. 

3.  You have a range of important work, select 1-2 findings that you feel are key contributions to human development and describe those in brief.

Although I began my research career with specific questions about a particular type of youth program, I have since broadened my work to explore the ways in which recreation, especially involving physical activity, contributes to well-being for adolescents and young adults, seeking to describe, explain, and optimize (Baltes, Reese, & Nesselroade, 1977) pathways to active lifestyles. My research spans a variety of contexts, from high school sport and summer camps to out-of-school time programs and leisure time physical activity, and encompasses various of aspects of well-being, including self-perceptions, mental health, purpose in life, and positive youth development. While there have been many interesting research findings from these projects, the aspect that I think is most important to the study of human development is actually in the research process and the ways in which I interact with practitioners in my work. Asking research questions that are relevant for practice, collecting data in collaboration with youth programs that can benefit from the study results, and maintaining relationships with practitioner colleagues are essential to my research program. I have also published papers about my research-practice partnerships, sharing insights to help others engage in this type of work. Here, a key finding is the importance of engaging in partnerships that are mutually-beneficial, which requires the researcher to care about the needs of the program not just pursue their own research agenda.

4.  Your one wish for the study of human development

I wish for better integration of research and practice. Our current system (at least in the United States where my work is based) for research training and funding often prioritizes basic research or applied/translational projects that are driven by the researchers’ interests without creating space for input from practitioners, and practitioners rarely receive training or support for engaging with research. However, human development takes place in real-world contexts, facilitated by programs and front-line practitioners. If our work is to have any impact on human lives it must be relevant and accessible. I believe the best way to ensure that happens is for researchers and practitioners to work more closely together and learn from each other.

5.  A mentoring statement or quote you find most meaningful or life-changing.

I learned from my own mentors the importance of supporting mentees in pursuing their own unique paths and I try to implement this approach in my mentoring as well. A mentor can’t provide a map for a mentee, but they can be a source of support on the mentee’s self-determined journey. 

About the researcher

Jen Agans is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management at the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to working at Penn State, Jen earned her PhD in Child Study and Human Development from Tufts University and served as the Assistant Director of the Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE) at Cornell University. Her research focuses on how youth and young adult physical activity and recreation can support positive youth development and well-being, with an emphasis integration across research and practice.

Edited and launched by Deborah J. Johnson & Yoko Yamamoto

SSHD Publicity Committee