Dr. Philip Benesch, chair of social sciences and associate professor of political science, announced that LVC students had a 100% success rate on the University of London law modules completed this summer. Five students—Samantha Paradise ’23 (psychology), Allison Jedrzejek ’22 (business administration), Ariana Genna ’22 (political science), Noah Tapp ’21 (political science), and Kaitlyn Reed ’21 (political science)— remotely completed the Legal System and Method 4 module. Jedrzejek, Genna, Tapp, and Reed also completed the Public Law module. This success will help these students accelerate their LVC graduation by transferring back credits for each module.

Dr. Michael Kitchens, professor of psychology, was quoted in a recent article, “When did people start making New Year’s resolutions? And how can we keep them?” Kitchens noted that “The success of your New Year’s resolution starts with your head,” and “Setting a specific goal can make all the difference…”

Dr. Stephanie Blanda, assistant professor of mathematical sciences, Dr. Ashley McFalls, assistant professor of neuroscience, Dr. Liz Sterner, assistant professor of chemistry, and Dr. Jenna Marx, assistant professor of psychology, attended an event at the Pennsylvania Governor’s Mansion to honor Women in STEM Oct. 17. The event was sponsored by the STEM-UP Network, whose goal is to “deliver strategies, relationships, and a strong community to women so they can flourish, prosper, and advance personally and in their STEM careers.”

Dr. Jenna Marx, assistant professor of psychology, published “Nothing alien about it: A comparison of weight bias in preschool-aged children’s ratings of non-human cartoons and human figures” in the Journal of Obesity Research & Clinical Practice. Marx, a licensed clinical psychologist and the department’s internship director, noted that “media exposes children to weight-biased messaging by presenting overweight characters negatively.” Her study found that preschool children demonstrated weight bias when assigning personality characteristics to images, with “overweight figures consistently rated more negatively than non-overweight figures, regardless of gender, stimulus type, or novelty of the image.”

Dr. Rachel Albert, assistant professor of psychology and director of LVC’s Baby Lab, was the keynote speaker for a Mile High Early Learning fundraising event in Denver, Colo., in March. Mile High Early Learning, an organization that provides early childhood programs for low income families, raised $162,000 during the event, which was attended by Denver’s mayor, Michael Hancock, and the state’s Lieutenant Governor, Dianne Primavera. Dr. Albert’s research-based approach to language development, which has been featured on NPR and in Scientific American, focuses on the powerful impact that engaged, responsive adults can have on children.

One of the most popular podcasts in the U.S., NPR’s Hidden Brain, featured Dr. Rachel Albert, assistant professor of psychology, and her research on “Baby Babbling” conducted with colleagues at Cornell University. Dr. Albert’s interview starts about 9.5 minutes into the podcast.

Dr. Lou Manza, chair and professor of psychology, had an extensive interview, “Here’s what Netflix’s Wild Wild Country doesn’t explain about cult leaders: An expert discusses how they seduce and control their followers,” published on The Verge website. The story was picked up worldwide, including as far away as China and the United Arab Emirates.

“Researchers learn the social function of babies’ babbling,” featuring work conducted by Dr. Rachel Albert, LVC assistant professor of psychology, was published in the Cornell Chronicle. Dr. Albert, who earned her Ph.D. from Cornell, performed the research with Dr. Jennifer Schwade, senior lecture in psychology at Cornell, and Dr. Michael Goldstein, associate professor of psychology at Cornell. According to the article, the scientists “recorded and recombined the vocalizations of 40 nine-month-olds and their mothers, using a ‘playback paradigm,’ widely used in animal studies, to assess how specific forms of sounds and actions by infants influenced parental behavior.”

Keely Jac Collins, Esq., ’03 has been named a partner in the King, Spry, Herman, Freund & Faul Law Firm (KingSpry) in the Lehigh Valley. Collins, psychology, is a specialist in employment, education, and municipal law.

“The social functions of babbling: acoustic and contextual characteristics that facilitate maternal responsiveness,” co-authored by Dr. Rachel R. Albert, LVC assistant professor of psychology, and Dr. Jennifer A. Schwade and Dr. Michael H. Goldstein, co-directors of the Behavioral Analysis of Beginning Years (B.A.B.Y.) Laboratory at Cornell University, was published in Development Science, a leading journal in developmental psychology.

By having mothers react to audio-visual examples of babies babbling, the authors determined that vocal maturity and infant gaze influence how mothers perceive and respond to infant vocalizations. The researchers conclude that “An important function of prelinguistic vocalizing may be to elicit parental behavior in ways that facilitate the infant’s own learning about speech and language.”