“What is required instead is an intentional reorientation of departmental culture—one that moves beyond aspirational commitments to equity and toward practices that actively align ideals, policies, and norms,” says @lehersingh.bsky.social, professor and chair of #psychology at UMBC. #AcademicSky
IMBES has joined BlueSky! Follow the new account for updates and cool science 🧠
Come join the wonderful @umdleadlab.bsky.social as our new lab manager this summer! Our lab is inclusive, creative, fun, and we’re engaged in all kinds of cool early developmental neuro (fMRI and fNIRS) research focused on language, executive function. and socioemotional development.
ManyBabies8: Screen Use 📱
MB8 aims to document early screen use across diverse cultural contexts & examine links to language & socio-emotional development in children under 3.
We’re inviting you to join!
Interested?
🔗 Fill out our short survey: forms.gle/7ASVadD7LT4j...
More: manybabies.org/MB8/
Postdoc position!
Myself and @jordanaxt.bsky.social are seeking applications for a shared post-doctoral researcher at McGill, beginning Fall 2026.
Topic area broadly centered on intergroup dynamics, prejudice, discrimination
Full description here: hehmanlab.org/ad
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Neuroscientist @clionamurray.com knows the power of community. Murray explains how @blackinneuro.bsky.social expanded from its humble beginnings as a Slack channel to connect Black neuroscientists across the diaspora.
By @alainaglevine.bsky.social
#neuroskyence
Study of 8M biomed & life science articles finds those led by women spent 7 to 15 days longer in review than those led by men. Over a career, women's papers could spend 350 to 750 additional days in review. Delays could slow promotion, esp to full professor. www.the-scientist.com/women-s-rese...
Mutual Sensitivity Between Caregivers Predicts Infant Affective State During Video Chat published in Infancy
Abstract Infancy is an extraordinary period of human development, in which babies turn sensory and environmental information into meaning in the cradle of their caregivers’ affective and attentional cues. Babies express what they are thinking and feeling through smiles and gazes long before they develop expressive language. Most developmental research focuses on mother-infant dyads within a controlled lab environment, despite the complexity of young children’s caregiving ecosystems, which range far beyond the mother-child dyad and include caregivers at a distance via technology like video chat. This study uses a novel state space approach to examine relations between the sensitivity of two caregivers — what we call “mutual sensitivity” — and infants’ real-time affective and attentional states during video chat sessions.
How to read a state space (Hollenstein, 2013): This figure depicts a single infant’s affective states over three video chat sessions. Each grid square represents a unique affective state characterized by both valence (1-7, negative to positive) and arousal (1-7), high to low. For example, we can see that during the first video chat session, this infant briefly spent time in a high arousal, low valence state (distress).
Background Caregiver sensitivity - a caregiver’s responsive, warm, temporally contingent engagement with an infant - has been robustly linked to children’s development across cognitive and affective domains. Prior studies have shown that global caregiver sensitivity predicts both infant affective valence and infant engagement in JVA during in-person interactions (Braungart-Rieker et al., 2001; Mason et al., 2019) and during video chat (Roche et al., 2022; Myers et al., 2024). In this study we used the Biringen et al., 2000 scale (1-9) and coded all behavioral variables every 30 seconds.
👀 New paper out in Infancy! Mutual Sensitivity Between Caregivers Predicts Infant Affective State... @dougpiper.bsky.social & I co-led this analysis with Gabrielle Strouse, @proflaurenmyers.bsky.social @drzosh.bsky.social @geotro.bsky.social and Rachel Barr onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
👀 Fantastic new review of disparate literature on stress & development across cog, emo and phys domains. "Early Life Stress Effects on Children's Biology, Behavior, & Health: Evidence, Mediators, Moderators, & Solutions"
@nicolebushphd.bsky.social @alliesullivan.bsky.social & Amanda Noroña-Zhou
The district court injunction that prevented NIH from capping indirects at 15% was upheld today on appeal!
www.reuters.com/world/trump-...
Income inequality and the erosion of democracy in the twenty-first century
www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....
♥️
“This irresponsible and purposely misleading guidance will lead to more hepatitis B infections in infants and children.” Read our full statement by AAP President Dr. Susan J. Kressly:
www.aap.org/en/news-room...
NIH grant applicants:
October and November grant application submission *deadlines* will be rescheduled (🤯). Specific dates TBD.
grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
Photo of an adorable black white kitten trying to hide under a tiny toy tent but failing quite spectacularly.
Marcel’s camping skills have not improved. 😔
Socioeconomic roots of academic faculty
Tenure-track faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. Moreover, this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years.
#AcademicSky
🚨 New Paper Alert🚨 focused on #representation and #generaliability in #neuroscience. A real labor of love. Was rejected from [… checks list 🤔] SIX journals and originally presented in 2020 at FLUX to find a home at AMPPS #persistence
2nd year grad students are no longer eligible to apply. Currently enrolled grad students must be in their first year, whether in a MS, BS-MS, or Ph.D.
Engage in policy work in bold new ways with SRCD.
SRCD is building the nation’s go-to hub for trusted, evidence-based insight on child development, and we want you to be a part of it. https://www.srcd.org/child-policy-hub
🎓 FLUX is proud to spotlight Gavkhar Abdurokhmonova.
Her research focuses on understanding how children's early language experiences shape their brain, cognitive, and socio-emotional development.
Read about her journey, motivations, and advice for other young scientists:
👉 buff.ly/19APuWX
Mine (human development) were all co-authored by my advisor and others, although I did 99% of the original writing, specifically, because it did feel weird to have someone else write portions of my dissertation. I included title pages with the list of authors for all three.
I am so excited to moderate this symposium at #flux2025. Please join us Saturday, 3pm in Hyde 1.
Across 4 methods & stages (direct neural recording, EEG, fNIRS, fMRI | mice, babies, toddlers & adolescents) we'll explore whether neural synchrony represents a developmental mechanism. Please join us!
Picture of Dana Miller Cotto with captioned text.
I’ve spent the last 15 years thinking about math skills that set kids up for success at school entry. Now, I’m excited to dive into new work on how math is conceived in California’s universal transitional kindergarten (UTK) funded through the Barbara White Bequest @berkeleyeducation.bsky.social
Note on the common fund website confirming cancellation of the Early Independence award for FY2026
commonfund.nih.gov/earlyindepen...
Bee news 🐝🍯🧪:
Scientists have developed a honeybee "superfood" that could protect the animals against the threats of climate change & habitat loss.
Bee colonies that ate the supplement during trials had up to 15 times more baby bees that grew to adulthood.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
The updated version of the database of PhD fellowships produced and maintained by my team can be downloaded by anyone here:
research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...
For each of the 187 fellowships, you will find a short description, deadline, $ amount, link, etc.
Good luck!
In a second, we form expectations about the likely traits and behaviors of people we meet. How does this ability develop? How do others’ perceived gender factor into it?
I’m thrilled to share a new paper now in press at Cognition with @andreicimpian.bsky.social and @lucaspbutler.bsky.social.
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We are looking to hire a new post-bac MRI tech! Great opportunity pre grad school! umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UMCP/job/Uni...
Why research is not enough
I wrote for Columbia University Press: I would like to say that whether to engage with the public is a career choice reasonably left to the individual scholar. In today’s world, I don’t think so. Everyone needs to find a way to express how our work matters. cupblog.org/2025/07/10/w...
