HD Outreach and Extension Publications
Understanding Self-Injury The latest research by Janis Whitlock and colleagues sheds light on general trends in non-suicidal self-injury, gender differences, and on the complex association with suicide.
Learning About How Young Children Learn Research by Tamar Kushnir sheds light on how young children learn about cause and effect through everyday experiences.
Research Sheds Light on How Babies Learn and Develop Language Research by Marianella Casasola provides a window into how babies learn and develop language skills during the first 2 years of life.
Nurse-Family Partnership Program Demonstrates Results Research by John Eckenrode demonstrates the long-term beneficial effects of the nurse home visitation program in reducing the incidence of child abuse and neglect in at-risk families.
The Effects of the Physical Environment on Children's Development Research by Gary Evans shows that the physical environment—noise level, overcrowding, and housing and neighborhood quality—profoundly influences child development including academic achievement, cognitive, social and emotional development as well as parenting behavior.
Discovering Child Language and Cognitive Growth Results from research by Barbara Lust and colleagues in the Cornell Language Acquisition Lab demonstrate how well equipped children are, beginning at birth, to accomplish the complex task of learning language.
Hearts, Minds, and Choices: Helping Improve Decision Making Across the Life Span Interdisciplinary research by Joseph Mikels in collaboration with Kosali Simon suggests ways for improving older adults' decision making.
A Life Worth Living: The Science of Human Flourishing Developmental research by Anthony Ong documents the remarkable capacity of some individuals to thrive in face of life's challenges and offers insights into how positive emotions influence health.
Adolescents and Risk: Helping Young People Make Better Choices For decades, adolescents have been bombarded by facts about the risks they face. Yet efforts to scare young decision makers into safe behavior have met with limited success. Research by Valerie Reyna and colleagues explores how adolescents consider risk and offers suggestions for new intervention strategies.
What Parents and Professionals Need to Know about Children's Testimony Children are increasingly called upon to testify in courts, most commonly in cases of maltreatment or divorce and child custody. Research by Valerie Reyna and Charles Brainerd provides insights that can help parents, guardians, law professionals and others.
More Than Just the Facts: Helping Patients Make Informed Choices Growing evidence suggests that being exposed to facts is not the same as being informed. Valerie Reyna discusses the science behind why many people have difficulty extracting a meaningful bottom line from raw numbers and statistics and suggests ways to explain information so that patients can make informed choices.
Numeracy and Health: Helping Americans Do the Math Understanding math is central to making decisions about finances and health. Valerie Reyna explains why it is difficult to understand raw numbers and statistics and suggests ways to explain information so that people can make better judgments.
The Way She Speaks: Maternal Conversation Style and Children’s Developing Autobiographical Memory and Sense of Self Research by Qi Wang shows how culture influences the way mothers share memories with their children which in turn influences children's self-concept.
Autism and the Brain Former faculty member Matthew Belmonte discusses his research on the brain physiology of people with autism spectrum conditions and suggests that autistic behaviors may well be a developmentally adaptive response given differences in brain structure and function.
Dyslexia and the Brain: Research Shows that Reading Ability Can be Improved Elise Temple, former faculty member in the Department of Human Development, uses brain-imaging techniques to understand what is going on in the brain as children develop language and reading skills. Her pioneering research provides encouraging news for children with developmental dyslexia.