Affiliated Faculty

Rachel Barr, Ph.D.
http://www.elp.georgetown.edu/

Rachel Barr, Director of the Georgetown Early Learning Project, received her PhD from the University of Otago, in New Zealand in Developmental Psychology and also trained as a Clinical Psychologist. She received her Ph.D. on infant imitation in 12- to 18-month-olds. After completing her PhD, she moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey, to do post-doctoral training on infant memory, and worked on how infants associate different memories.

Professor Barr’s research at the Georgetown Early Learning Project focuses on infant imitation, learning, and memory. Because infants are preverbal, the project relies on imitation and learning techniques to find out what infants have learned, how well and how long they remember information. She is particularly interested in how infants pick up information from different sources, television, siblings, adults, and different contexts. Her past research in collaboration with other researchers at the Early Learning Project in Otago, New Zealand and in New Brunswick, New Jersey, has shown that infants do learn information from a variety of sources such as television, siblings, and across contexts. She is studying how this behavior changes as a function of age of the infant. Future research will focus on how infants learn from television and television features that enhance infant learning. Current questions that the Early Learning Project is working on include: How do infants process 2-dimensional images and transfer that knowledge to the 3-dimensional world? What features do infants pay particular attention to and does that attention enhance their ability to transfer information? Can infants learn multiple pieces of information from television at once? If so what do they do with that information?

Sue Fenstermacher, Ph.D.

Sue Fenstermacher, Post Doctoral Research Fellow of the Georgetown Early Learning Project, received her Ph.D. in 2008 from Boston University’s Psychology (Human Development) program, where she worked under the mentorship of Dr. Kimberly Saudino. Her graduate work comprised an NRSA-funded research project exploring the genetic and environmental etiology of imitation in a sample of two year old twins, as well as exploring potential cognitive, social, and temperamental predictors of individual differences in children’s imitative learning. Recent publications include: “Toddler see, toddler do? Genetic and environmental influences on laboratory-assessed elicited imitation” (Behavior Genetics, 2007); “Exploring individual differences in young children’s imitative behavior” (Developmental Review, 2006), and several entries in The Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Psychology (2005).

Chandan Vaidya, Ph.D.
http://www.georgetown.edu/research/vaidyalab/

Chandan Vaidya, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Georgetown University. Her graduate training is in Developmental Psychology from Syracuse University, and her post-doctoral training is in Cognitive Neuroscience from Stanford University. Her research aims at characterizing the neurobiological basis of cognitive control within working and long-term memory. She links behavior to thebrain by using paradigms from experimental psychology to isolate cognitive processes in healthy individuals. She applies these paradigms to patients with disorders of those cognitive processes due to lesions, degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, or developmental disorders such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism, and imaging these cognitive processes in the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Jennifer Woolard, Ph.D.
http://crawl.georgetown.edu./

Dr. Woolard’s Center for Research on Adolescence, Women, and the Law conducts action research on police interrogation, culpability, the attorney-client relationship, and the role of parents in adolescents’ legal decision making. Dr. Woolard has published on the prevention of child abuse and neglect, policy regarding female delinquency, mental health needs of juvenile delinquents, and the overlap between child maltreatment and domestic violence. Her recent research collaborations include membership on the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. Currently, she is a Research Fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service. Dr. Woolard has presented her research findings to a wide variety of academic, legal, and policy audiences, including Congressional Subcommittees. Her work on a recent report to the D.C. City Council has led to proposed legislation removing juvenile offenders from the D.C. adult jail. She also works with local nonprofit agencies to study community change and youth violence prevention.