Contact
Email

Center and Institute Affilitation

Center for Research on Families

Neuroscience & Behavior Graduate Program

Research

Our group is primarily interested in how reaching changes as infants grow, in how vision and touch aid in that development, and how older infants plan and coordinate their reaches to solve hidden object problems.

Publications

  1. Berthier, N.E., DeBlois, S., Poirier, C.R., Novak, M.A., & Clifton, R.K. (2000). Where's the ball? Two- and three-year-olds reason about unseen events. Developmental Psychology , 36, 394-401 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.36.3.394.
  2. Berthier, N.E., Barto, A.G., & Schlesinger, M. (2000). Learning and Dynamics. Proceedings of NSF DARPA conference on development and learning.
  3. Berthier, N.E., Bertenthal, B.I., Seaks, J.D., Sylvia, M.R., Johnson, R.L. & Clifton, R.K. (2001). Using object knowledge in visual tracking and reaching. Infancy, 2, 257-284 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15327078IN0202_9.
  4. Butler, S.C., Berthier, N.E., & Clifton, R.K. (2002). Two-year-olds' search strategies and visual tracking in a hidden displacement task, Developmental Psychology, 38, 581-590 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.38.4.581.
  5. Keen, R., Carrico, R.L., Sylvia, M.R., & Berthier, N.E. (2003). How infants use perceptual information to guide action, Developmental Science, 6, 221-231 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-7687.00274.
  6. Mash, C, Keen, R., & Berthier, N.E. (2003). Visual access and attention in two-year-olds' event reasoning and object search. Infancy, 4, 371-388 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15327078IN0403_04.
  7. O'Sullivan, L.P. & Berthier, N.E. (2003). Attention during looking and reaching in 7.5 month-old infants. Developmental Psychobiology , 42, 292-300 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/dev.10102.
  8. Englebrecht, S., Berthier, N.E., & O'Sullivan, L.P. (2003). The undershoot bias-A stochastic optimal control strategy. Psychological Science, 14, 257-261 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.03431.
  9. Keen, R.E. & Berthier, N.E. (2005) Continuities and discontinuities in infants' representation of objects and events. In R. Kail (Editor) Advances in Child Development and Behavior, New York: Elsevier. pp 243-279 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2407(04)80009-0.
  10. Mash, C., Novak, B., Berthier, N., & Keen, R.. (2006). What do two-year-olds understand about hidden -object events? Developmental Psychology, 42, 263-271 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.42.2.263.
  11. Berthier, N., Rosenstein, M., & Barto, A. (2005). Approximate optimal control as a model for motor learning. Psychological Review, 112, 329-346 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.112.2.329.
  12. Berthier, N. & Keen, R. (2006). Development of reaching in infancy. Experimental Brain Research, 169, 507-518 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00221-005-0169-9.
  13. Carrico, R.L. & Berthier, N.E. (2008). Vision and precision reaching in 15 month-old infants. Infant Behavior & Development, 31, 62-70 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2007.07.005.
  14. Keen, R., Berthier, N., Sylvia, M.R., Butler, S., Prunty, P., & Baker, R.K. (2008). Toddlers' use of cues in a search task. Infant and Child Development, 17, 249-267 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/icd.550.
  15. Berthier, N.E. & Carrico, R.L. (2010). Visual information and object size in infant reaching. Infant Behavior & Development, 33, 555-566 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2010.07.007.
  16. Berthier, N.E. (2011). The syntax of human infant reaching. In H. Sayama, A.A. Minai, D. Braha, and Y. Bar-Yam (Eds) Unifying Themes in Complex Systems Volume VIII: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Complex Systems. New England Complex Systems Institute Series on Complexity, NECSI Knowledge Press, 1477-1487. http://people.umass.edu/neb/papers/325.pdf
  17. Nelson, E., Berthier, N.E., Metevier, C., & Novak, M. (2011). Evidence for motor planning in monkeys: Rhesus macaques select efficient grips when transporting spoons. Developmental Science, 14822-831 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01030.x.
  18. Haddad, J.M., Claxton, L.J., Keen, R., Berthier, N.E., Riccio, G.E., Hamill, J., & van Emmerik, R. (2012). Development of coordination between posture and manual control. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 111, 286-298, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2011.08.002.
  19. Nelson, E., Konidaris, G., Berthier, N. Braun, M.C., Novak, M.F., Suomi, S.J. & Novak, M.A. (2012) Kinematics of reaching and implications for handedness in rhesus monkey infants. Developmental Psychobiology, 54, 460-467 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/dev.20604.
  20. O'Sullivan, L.P., Goubet, N., & Berthier, N.E. (2012). L’atteinte de l’objet chez l’enfant né prématuré [The development of reaching in infants born before term]. Enfance, 64, 25-34.
  21. Butler, S.C., O'Sullivan, L., Shah, B., & Berthier, N.E. (2014). Preference for infant-directed speech in preterm infants. Infant Behavior & Development, 37, 505-511 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2014.06.007.
  22. Jenkins, I. & Berthier, N.E. (2014). Working Memory and Inhibitory Control in Visually Guided Manual Search in Toddlers. Developmental Psychobiology, 56, 1252-1262. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/dev.21205.
  23. Berthier, N.E., Boucher, K., Weisner, N. (2014). Investigating individual differences in toddler search with mixture models. Infant and Child Development DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/icd.1875.
  24. Nelson, E., Konidaris, G., & Berthier, N.E. (2014). Hand preference status and reach kinematics in infants. Infant Behavior & Development, 37, 615-623 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2014.08.013.
  25. Hartstein, L.E. & Berthier, N.E. (2018). Transition to Success on the Model Room Task: The Importance of Improvements in Working Memory. Developmental Science, 21, e12538 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/desc.12538.
  26. Hartstein, L.E. Durniak, M.T., Karlicek, Jr., R.F., & Berthier, N.E. (2017). A comparison of the effects of CCT and gender on the performance of cognitive tasks. Lighting Research & Technology https://doi.org/10.1177/1477153517721728.
  27. Nelson, E., Berthier, N.E., & Konidaris, G. (2018). Handedness and reach kinematics in adults: Left-handers are not reversed right-handers. Journal of Motor Behavior. 50, 381-391 https://doi.org/10.1080/00222895.2017.1363698.
  28. Hartstein, L.E., LeBourgeois, M.K., & Berthier, N.E. (2018). Light correlated color temperature and task switching performance in preschool-age children: Preliminary insights. PLOS One https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202973 .