Rebecca Woods

Assistant Professor
Office Phone: 701-231-9791
Email: Rebecca.Woods@ndsu.edu

Core Area: Infant & toddler development

Research Interests: Perception and cognition in infancy; object processing; multimodal processing; early gender differences

Infant Cognitive Development Lab

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Rebecca J. Woods, Ph.D., Assistant Professor

Texas A&M University - Ph.D. Psychology, 2006

Stephen F. Austin State University - B.A. Psychology and Art, 1999

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Academic and Professional Appointments

2008 - Present: North Dakota State University Assistant Professor in Child Development & Family Science

2007-2008: Stephen F. Austin State University, Visiting Assistant Professor in Psychology

2006-2007: Texas A&M University, Postdoctoral Assistant, Brain & Gender Lab

2006: Texas A&M University, Lecturer, Psychology

Courses

CDFS 320 Prenatal, Infant, & Toddler Development

CDFS 230 Lifespan Development

Professional Memberships

International Society on Infant Studies

Society for Research in Child Development

Society for the Teaching of Psychology

The Council of Teachers of Undergraduate Psychology

Research Statement

Humans possess an amazing capacity for organizing the visual world into rich, coherent units full of meaning and value. When examining an object, some information becomes more prominent while other information is disregarded. I am interested in learning which types of visual information are particularly salient to infants and how and why this changes throughout development. To individuate an object (i.e., to determine whether an object is the same or a different object than one that was seen previously), an infant must attend to various types of visual information and use this information to make a "same/different object" distinction. One type of information used to make this distinction is an object's features, for example, its shape or color. Early in infancy, the features to which infants primarily attend are shape or form features. Later infants may attend to other feature information, such as a surface pattern or color. My research is focused on learning how infants begin to identify new forms of information as important and how development in multiple areas contribute to the emergence of this basic cognitive ability.

Selected Publications

Woods, R. J., & Wilcox, T. (under review). Co-variation of color and luminance facilitate object individuation in infancy.

Alexander, G. M., Wilcox, T., & Woods, R. (in press). Sex differences in infants' visual interest in toys. Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Wilcox, T., Woods, R., & Chapa, C. (in press). Color-function categories that prime infants to use color information in an object individuation task. Cognitive Psychology.

Wilcox, T., & Woods, R. (2008). Experience primes infants to individuate objects: Illuminating learning mechanisms. In A. Needham & A. Woodward (Eds.), Learning and the Infant Mind (pp. 117-143). NY: Oxford University Press.

Wilcox, T., Woods, R., & Chapa, C., McCurry, S. (2007). Multisensory exploration and object individuation in infancy. Developmental Psychology, 43, 479-495.

Woods, R. J., & Wilcox, T. (2006). Infants' ability to use luminance information to individuate objects. Cognition, 99, B31-B40.

Wilcox, T., Woods, R., Tuggy, L., & Napoli, R. (2006). Shake, rattle, and…. one or two objects? Infants' use of sound information to individuate objects. Infancy, 9, 97-123.

Wilcox, T., Bortfeld, H., Woods, R., Wruck, E., & Boas, D. (2005). Using Near-infrared spectroscopy to assess neural activation during object processing in infants. Journal of Biomedical Optics, 10, 011010.

Selected Presentations

Woods, R. J. (April, 2008). Using eye tracking to assess infants' tracking of 3-dimensional objects. Presented at the Southwestern Psychological Association Annual Meeting, Kansas, MO.

Woods, R. J., Wilcox, T., & Armstrong, J. (April, 2007). Infants' tracking of objects through occlusion in 3-dimensional displays. Presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, Boston, MA.

Woods, R. J. (April, 2006). Pattern-based object individuation in young infants: Touching, seeing, and sitting. Presented at the Cognoscenti speaker series, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX.

Woods, R. J. (March, 2006). Let's play! Multi-sensory exploration and object individuation in young infants. Presented at Student Research Week, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX.

Woods, R., & Wilcox, T. (April, 2005). What's so great about color and luminance? Infants' use of luminance differences on chromatic objects in an individuation task. Presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, Atlanta, GA.

Woods, R., & Wilcox, T. (May, 2004). Infants' use of color and luminance differences to individuate objects. Poster session presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Chicago, IL.

Woods, R., & Wilcox, T. (October, 2003). The development of infants' use of luminance in object individuation. Presented at Armadillo: The Southwest Cognition Conference, College Station, TX.

Woods, R., & Wilcox, T. (April, 2003). Infants' use of luminance in object individuation. Poster session presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, Tampa, FL.