Developmental Psychology
What is Developmental Psychology?
Developmental psychology explores how people grow and change across the lifespan, including physical, cognitive, social and emotional development from infancy through adulthood.
Developmental psychologists, including those at NDSU study how age is related to:
- problem solving abilities
- the way we perceive other people
- language development
- social interaction
- coordinated behaviors (e.g., driving, eye-hand coordination)
Our Programs
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Major | Minor
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Doctoral
Participant Opportunities
Thank you for your interest in participating in our research! Researchers at NDSU study a wide range of topics related to child development, including learning, emotions and social interactions. If you have a child who is 2 to 18 years old and would like to be contacted about participating in our research, please fill out the form below. Someone will contact you when we have a study that your child is the right age for!
Developmental Psychology Faculty and Research
Benjamin Balas, Ph.D. - Research Interests: High-level vision, face recognition, visual development, ERPs
Erin Conwell, Ph.D. - Research Interests: Early childhood development
Katherine Duggan, Ph.D. - Research Interests: Personality, sleep, cardiovascular disease, lifespan development, healthy aging, statistics/methods
Anna Finley, Ph.D. - Research Interests: Social and affective neuroscience, emotion regulation, self-regulation, well-being, healthy aging, loneliness
Jeremy Hamm, Ph.D. - Research Interests: Motivation, emotion, self-regulation, life transitions, healthy aging
Linda Langley, Ph.D. - Research Interests: Cognitive aging, attention, visual search, cognitive training
Affiliated Faculty
James E. Deal, Ph.D. - Research Interests: Personality development in children; Relationship between individual development and family relationships
Heather Fuller, Ph.D. - Research Interests: Social relationships across the lifespan (e.g. intergenerational relationships); Psychological well-being in old age; Culture and Aging; Migration, transnationalism and acculturation; Biculturalis
Joel Hektner, Ph.D. - Research Interests: Aggressive children; Research methods; Prevention programs for high-risk aggressive children; Peer affiliation patterns and peer influences on children's behaviors; Family and school conditions that facilitate optimal experiences (flow) and optimal development; The Experience Sampling Method
Melissa Lunsman O'Connor, Ph.D. - Research Interests: Examining age-related differences and changes in cognitive and functional abilities, such as driving, among healthy adults and clinical populations; quantitative methods and psychometrics; interventions for improving cognition, health, and everyday functioning; and attitudes toward dementia.