Family Research Scholars Program
THE 2008-2009 SCHOLARS
Matt Davidson, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Davidson's research program targets a better understanding of the development of executive functions, including attention, working memory and cognitive control. He is currently exploring the effects of physical activity on cognitive abilities and emotional stability in children and young adults, including gender related differences before, during, and after puberty. As a Family Research Scholar, Davidson will prepare a grant proposal to test the effects of physical activity on cognitive abilities across development. The broader impacts of this research will be to expand our scientific knowledge about these effects in humans and to encourage active lifestyles for children, adolescents, and adults.
Unja Hayes, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Hayes' research focuses on the influence of reproductive events on attachment between parent and offspring. Specifically, she examines how changes in reproductive status (e.g., virgin, pregnant/expectant, and parous) and its concomitant neurobiology influence quality of parental care in prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) and humans. As a Family Research Scholar, Hayes will address whether women at risk of depression, due to pre-existing mental illnesses and /or social disparities, are affected by medical interventions during childbirth delivery.
Krista Harper, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Harper is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on f social movements, health inequalities, political ecology and medical anthropology in Eastern Europe (Hungary), the Roma (Gypsy) diaspora, and the European Union. As a Family Research Scholar, Harper will bring together a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach and digital media to investigate how environmental inequalities are produced and how residents experience environmental and social exclusion in a city in northeastern Hungary and in two other communities.
Rebecca Ready, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Ready is a geriatric neuropsychologist with research interests in the assessment of mood, quality of life, and well-being in aging populations. She is particularly interested in assessment of these constructs in dementia patients, both from caregiver and patient perspectives, and am interested in the memory processes that are involved in recall and reporting mood, quality of life, and well-being. As a Family Research Scholar, Ready will investigate family care giving and particularly consider the daily emotions and physical health of adult caregivers.
Lynnette Leidy Sievert, Professor of Anthropology
Leidy Sievert is a biological anthropologist whose research has focused on age at menopause and symptom experience at menopause as two aspects of human variation. She is also interested in the evolution of menopause and post-reproductive aging as a human trait. As a Family Research Scholar, Leidy Sievert will study three interconnected aspects of everyday life, marriage and family, religion and spiritual practices and economic security in relation to symptom experience among women at midlife. She will conduct this research in Mexico.
Alice Carter , Professor of Psychology
Carter is a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She researches the identification of infants and toddlers at risk for problems in social, behavioral, and emotional functioning and understanding the role of family functioning in the developmental course of children at genetic risk for or exhibiting clinical disorders. She is also studying young children with autism spectrum disorders and their families as part of the Boston University Studies To Advance Autism Research (STAART). Carter's proposed project as a CRF Family Research Scholar will consider the development of a family-focused intervention for toddlers at-risk for anxiety disorders.
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