CHILD DEVELOPMENT

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The purpose of the proposed program is to train predoctoral and postdoctoral students in child development research. Students will concentrate their efforts on various topics, each dealing with behavioral adaptation in childhood and related developmental processes. Research in child development is essential to a better understanding of child mental health and those disorders of adulthood having developmental antecedents. Current societal conditions have an increasingly negative impact on children's development, thus creating an urgent need for research information dealing with both normative and pathologic aspects of behavioral development. The proposed program is an outgrowth of training efforts in the Institute of Child Development supported by NIMH for more than 30 years and includes a variety of didactic components as well as a research apprenticeship at the predoctoral level. Postdoctoral training encompasses a series of coordinated program activities as well as bench work in social and emotional processes, language development, cognitive development and neuroscience, psychobiological processes, and perceptual development. Predoctoral trainees (8) entering the program will have completed baccalaureate studies in psychology or a related area and occasionally will have had graduate work. Trainees are recruited from a substantial applicant pool and represent the most outstanding students in a competitive program. Postdoctoral trainees (2) will enter the program having had training in specialties other than child development or developmental psychology. The main training facility is the Institute of Child Development, a regular academic department of the University of Minnesota. The faculty consists of 16 professors in this department, whose work ranges across the entire discipline. Physical facilities are mostly housed in the Institute building on the main campus of the University which includes about 50.000 sq. ft. of space. Ongoing collaborative research is also conducted in laboratories in the Departments of Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Educational Psychology, and Kinesiology.