New Book for Moms!

Dr. Boseovski has written the first book for moms on how to foster healthy body image development in 3- to 10-year-old girls. The book is co-authored with Dr. Ashleigh Gallagher and is chock full of scientifically supported, developmentally appropriate tips for raising girls to have a healthy self-concept, while also emphasizing health behaviors as a key element of healthy body image and body respect. The book can be pre-ordered here or here.

Check out a recent interview about the book here.

Congratulations Lindsay Jarvis

We are proud to announce that Lindsay Jarvis (Faculty Advisor: Dr. Stuart Marcovitch) has successfully defended her Master's thesis on “Rural Appalachian and Urban Triad Children’s Understanding and Justification of Ecological Food Chains”! Depicted is Lindsay Jarvis with her thesis committee: Drs. Peter Delaney, Jasmine DeJesus, and Stuart Marcovitch. We are grateful to all of the families that contributed their time to this project; we would not have been able to complete it without your patience, flexibility, and willingness to jump into the online world along with us.

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Congratulations Andrea Yuly-Youngblood!

We are proud to announce that Andrea Yuly-Youngblood successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation on "Children's Emergent Beliefs about Social Rank and Gender" today. Completion of a PhD is extremely challenging under the best of circumstances, but Andrea was tasked with doing so in a pandemic where we had to shut down the lab and come up with alternate ways of testing our child participants (on Zoom!). Andrea displayed incredible perseverance and resilience throughout this time. We are grateful to all of the families that contributed their time to this project; we would not have been able to complete it without your patience, flexibility, and willingness to jump into the online world along with us.

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Andrea's research, advised by Dr. Boseovski, examined whether children understand the difference between status and power, and the way that gender intersects with this understanding. Her findings reveal that power is understood fairly early in contrast to status and that children favor high status characters of their own gender, but that there is also some evidence of favoritism toward boys as leaders. These findings are important for our understanding of perceived social inequalities and children's emerging ideas about their own career aspirations.

She will be officially Dr. Andrea Yuly-Youngblood following her graduation this summer! Please join us in congratulating her on this tremendous achievement!

New Master's Student - Fall 2023

We are delighted to announce that Julie Peebles has been accepted to our developmental psychology Master's program in Fall, 2023! Julie is already an invaluable DUCK Lab member and we are thrilled that she'll be staying in the lab. She has been instrumental in assisting with a project examining children's ideas about body shape, eating, and activity. She will begin her own research program in a related area; see the brief bio below and please join us in welcoming Julie to the program!

Julie Peebles is a psychology research assistant and dance artist from Acton, Massachusetts. After graduating from UNC Greensboro this coming May with a BA in Psychology and BFA in Dance Choreography & Performance, she will be continuing her education at UNC Greensboro next fall for her MA in General Experimental Psychology under the mentorship of Drs. Janet Boseovski and Stuart Marcovitch. During her graduate career with the DUCK Lab, Julie plans to conduct research on the development of body image in children in dance settings. Outside of her scholarly and creative endeavors, Julie also enjoys hiking and having movie nights with friends.

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UNCG Graduate Research and Creativity Showcase

We are thrilled to announce that our own Lindsay Jarvis is the winner of the UNCG Graduate Research and Creativity Showcase in the category of Social Science, Education, and Business! She was awarded $500 for her presentation, which brings awareness to the importance of including Appalachian people in psychological research. Congratulations, Lindsay!

Society for Research in Child Development Meeting

We want to congratulate graduate students Lindsay Jarvis, Anjali Pradeep, and Andrea Yuly-Youngblood on their research presentations at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), which was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, March 2023. SRCD is the largest developmental science conference and it promotes the use of developmental research to understand and improve the lives of all people, including children and their families.

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Congratulations to Dr. Bettencourt!

We want to send a huge CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. Kathleen Bettencourt (to be made official at summer graduation). Kathleen’s dissertation explored the relation between temporal memory and executive function in early and middle childhood.

We are so proud of what she has accomplished and in a pandemic, no less. Kathleen’s first study took place in person on campus. However, her second study started as the pandemic began and she had to change things around to allow families to participate online. As always, we are incredibly thankful to our DUCK Lab families and community partners for helping support Kathleen’s work.

Up next for Kathleen: she will be starting a position as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wake Forest University this Fall. We’ll miss you, Kathleen!

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Kathleen with her advisor, Dr. Marcovitch

Congratulations to Dr. Marble!

Kimberly Marble aced her dissertation defense and we couldn't be more proud of her! Kimmy’s dissertation explored children’s moral evaluations of knowledgeable versus wealthy people in negative event contexts.

Our DUCK Lab families and community partners have always been instrumental to our students' success and we are *especially* grateful for your support of Kimmy's work during the pandemic. Our lab closure was very stressful for all of us and your generosity in continuing to participate in our research online has made all the difference.

Kimmy will start her position as Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University this Fall. We’ll miss you, Kimmy!

Kimmy at her dissertation defense.

Kimmy and Dr. Boseovski

Kimmy with her proud parents!

Kimmy and fellow DUCKie Kathleen Bettencourt

Kimmy and Dr. Boseovski at the Spring 2022 Doctoral Hooding Ceremony

DUCKies at CDS 2022 Conference

For the first time in two years, our DUCKies were able to attend an in-person research conference!

Graduate students Andrea Yuly-Youngblood and Kimberly Marble participated in a symposium and presented talks about some of the research related to their dissertation topics. Graduate student Kathleen Bettencourt and postdoctoral research fellow Dr. Jessica Caporaso presented posters related to their research.

Our poster presentations from CDS 2022 can be found here.

Dr. Jess Caporaso presented research that indicates that 4- to 8-year-old children see unprovoked inequality (e.g., not sharing resources) as more immoral compared to situations where inequality was provoked (e.g., not sharing as in-kind retaliation).

Dr. Jess Caporaso presenting her research.

Graduate student Kathleen Bettencourt presenting her research.

Graduate student Kathleen Bettencourt's work demonstrated that in middle childhood, children’s executive control (e.g., flexible thinking; the ability to manipulate information in their minds) is associated with the ability to remember time-based information (e.g., events that took place in different seasons).

Kimmy Marble and Andrea Yuly-Youngblood presented a talk at a symposium that explored children's understanding of power, social status, and inequality.

Graduate student Andrea Yuly-Youngblood presented her ongoing dissertation work showing that 8- to 10-year-olds, but not younger children, can differentiate knowledge from prestige when making judgments about which people are most admired and appreciated.

Graduate student Kimmy Marble presented her completed dissertation work that shows that 5- to 8-year-old children are more likely to consult a knowledgeable rather than wealthy person when a problem needs to be solved.

Seeking Graduate Students for 2022/2023!

Drs. Janet Boseovski and Stuart Marcovitch, Co-Directors of the DUCK Lab (Development and Understanding of Children’s Knowledge) seek highly motivated students to join the lab in UNC Greensboro’s experimental MA or MA/PHD program in developmental psychology.

In general, lab research focuses on cognitive development and developmental social cognition. In particular, Dr. Marcovitch seeks students who are interested in the development of executive function in the pre-school and school age years, and how it may relate to social processing, education, and religiosity. Dr. Boseovski seeks students who are interested in children’s social judgments and decision making, children and adults’ perceptions of parenting, and the development of body image. The DUCK Lab houses excellent research resources, including a database of several thousand research participants and connections to numerous day cares and schools in the Greensboro area. In collaboration with the Greensboro Science Center, both faculty members are also actively involved in a program of research dedicated to understanding children’s informal learning.

UNCG is the 6th largest university in North Carolina, and one of the most diverse universities in the state with 19,000+ students, and 3,000+ faculty and staff members representing 90+ nationalities. The Department of Psychology is vibrant and diverse and it is well known for its warm atmosphere and emphasis on collaborative, cutting edge science.

The third largest city in NC, Greensboro has a population of about 300,000 (similar to the size of Cincinnati or Pittsburgh.) A true college town, there are 14 four-year colleges and universities within 25 miles of UNCG’s campus, including 45,000 college and university students from four campuses within a mile of downtown Greensboro — a compact, 58 acre area that includes the minor league baseball park, five performing arts spaces, 50+ restaurants, four breweries, a hip restaurant/bowling alley, and a retro arcade/bar, surrounded by a greenway that’s part of the 500 miles of hiking and biking trails that run throughout the city.

Interested applicants are encouraged to contact Janet and Stuart directly at jjboseov@uncg.edu or s_marcov@uncg.edu respectively.

Information about graduate applications and deadlines can be found here.