Core ADP Faculty
Timothy W. Curby, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Teacher-child interactions; Achievement; Socioemotional development; Classroom observational measurement; Quantitative Methods. Dr. Curby’s work focuses on early childhood classroom experiences and applying advanced statistical models to school-based research. Specifically, he focuses on the interactions that teachers have with children as a mechanism for children’s development. Dr. Curby is also interested in measurement of classrooms and the development of observational measures of the classroom environment. More information about his work is available on the Development In School Contexts (DISC) lab website.
Susanne Denham, Ph.D.
Professor & ADP Program Director
Social and emotional development, school readiness, developmental psychopathology, and parenting.Dr. Denham's teaching and research interests include basic processes of social and emotional development, and the role of emotional competence in children’s social and academic functioning. Denham’s program of research on social-emotional assessment for school readiness is funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. As well, her work on the intra- and interpersonal contributors to children’s forgiveness, and her longitudinal investigation on the development of emotional competence, are ongoing. She is the author of two books, Emotional Development in Young Children and, with Dr. Rosemary Burton, Social and Emotional Prevention and Intervention Programming for Preschoolers, and numerous scholarly articles. Having served as a member of numerous editorial boards, Denham is currently the editor of Early Education and Development.
Robert Pasnak, Ph.D.
Professor
Cognitive development, thinking and problem solving. Dr. Pasnak is a cognitive developmental psychologist whose teaching and research concern the development of children's thinking, particularly when they are young, have disabilities, or are at risk for cognitive delays. In much of this research, the Piagetian developmental framework for cognitive abilities taught in school systems has been used to help children reach age norms in cognitive development. "Learning set" and "errorless teaching" techniques are methods used to help children learn age -appropriate concepts that they have been slow to develop. Graduate students are helped to learn these techniques and then they teach them to undergraduate research assistants.
Koraly Perez-Edgar, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Attention; Temperament; Psychophysiology & Neuroimaging; Socioemotional Development; Developmental Psychopathology, particularly Anxiety. Dr. Perez-Edgar's research examines the relations between temperament and psychopathology with an eye to potential moderating mechanisms. In particular, her work focuses on the role of attention in shaping socioemotional behavior. Dr. Perez-Edgar takes a multi-method approach involving direct observation of behavior, cognitive functioning, psychophysiology (EEG/ERP), and neuroimaging (fMRI). Work in her lab involves a wide age range from toddlers through young adults. For more information, please see the website for the Cognition, Affect, and Temperament Lab.
Johannes Rojahn, Ph.D.
Professor
Intellectual and developmental disabilities (including Autism Spectrum Disorders). Dr. Rojahn has two programmatic lines of research [1] assessment and behavioral interventions for challenging behaviors and psychopathology in intellectual/developmental disabilities; [2] socio-emotional requisite skills and their impact on general interpersonal functioning in intellectual/developmental disabilities. Dr. Rojahn is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Mental Health Research in Intellectual Disabilities and has served as Associate Editor for Research in Developmental Disabilities and the American Journal on Mental Retardation. He is also editorial board member of the American Journal on Mental Retardation, Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Behavioral Interventions
Patricia Wanschura, Ph.D.
Visiting Associate Professor
Dr. Wanschura served on the faculty of St. Mary's College, State University of New York at Cortland and St. Joseph's University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before joining the GMU faculty in 1991. Her teaching and research interests are in human development and statistics, with a particular interest in children's thinking and memory strategies.
Adam Winsler, Ph.D.
Professor
School readiness and child care among diverse low-income preschoolers; Private speech and self-regulation; bilingualism; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; early childhood education. Dr. Winsler is an applied developmental psychologist with interests in children's transition to school, the development of self-regulation, children's private speech, Vygotskian sociocultural theory; bilingualism and early schooling for English-Language Learners (ELLs), parent-child interaction, and the prevention of behavior disorders. His current research explores childcare, school readiness, and early school trajectories among ethnically and linguistically diverse, low-income, urban preschoolers; Private speech and self-regulation in typical children and those with ADHD or autistic spectrum disorders; Music/dance and self-regulation; Self-regulated learning and motivation among college students. See websites below for more information, publications, projects, and student publications.
AFFILIATE FACULTY
Hideko Bassett, Ph.D. (hhamada1@gmu.edu) Assistant Research Scientist
Marilou Hyson, Ph.D. (mhyson1@gmu.edu)
Early emotional development; young children's approaches to learning; assessing quality in early childhood environments; professional development systems in early childhood education; early childhood development and education in international contexts. She is currently working with Save the Children and the World Bank on early childhood development projects in Bangladesh and Indonesia and is co-authoring a chapter on measuring supports for children's social and emotional competence within early childhood program environments.
Elyse Lehman, Ph.D. (elehman@gmu.edu) Professor Emeritus.
Cognitive development, attention, memory, and problem solving, educational applications. Dr. Lehman has been a visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a cognitive developmentalist who is interested in the development of self-control in children. She currently is conducting research on the mechanisms by which children monitor and update their memories, and on individual differences in children's eyewitness accuracy and suggestibility, and on the development of attention in school-age children.
Mary Ann McCabe, Ph.D. (mamccabe@cox.net)
Child development and public policy; knowledge transfer; pediatric (health) psychology; children’s mental health. She is a clinical psychologist and consultant in independent practice. In addition to her appointment at GMU, she is Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine. Most recently Dr. McCabe was Director of the Office for Policy and Communications for the Society for Research in Child Development and directed the SRCD Congressional and Executive Branch policy fellowship programs. Previously, she was the Director of Health Psychology and Director of Training in Psychology at Children’s National Medical Center.
Jack Naglieri, Ph.D. (naglieri@gmu.edu) Professor, School Psychology Program
Research Interests: Psychological and Educational Assessment of children and adults; cognitive processing and cognitively based academic instruction; theories and measurement of intelligence; fair assessment of culturally and linguistically diverse populations.
Ellen Rowe, Ph.D. (erowe@gmu.edu) Assistant Professor, School Psychology Program
Dr. Rowe received her doctorate in 2005 from the University of Georgia. Her research interests include assessment of and interventions for emotional, behavioral, and adjustment problems in children and adolescents.