Natalie Robichaud ’14Wesleyan’s Cognitive Development Labs hosted Family Math Night at Edna Stevens Elementary School in Cromwell, Conn. on April 9. The event was full of games and activities for preschool children to play and get them excited about math while showing families activities that they can do at home to prepare their children for kindergarten. Assistant Professor of Psychology Anna Shusterman’s students designed the math games as part of a research methods class. (more…)
Olivia DrakeThe Board of Trustees recently conferred tenure to four Wesleyan faculty. Their promotions take effect July 1. They are: Lisa Cohen, associate professor of English; Abigail Hornstein, associate professor of economics; Miri Nakamura, associate professor of Asian languages and literatures; and Anna Shusterman, associate professor of psychology. Other tenure announcements may be released after the Board's May meeting. "Please join us in congratulating them on their impressive records of accomplishment," said Wesleyan President Michael Roth. Brief descriptions of their areas of research and teaching are below: Lisa Cohen joined the English Department’s creative writing faculty in Fall 2007. Her courses are…
This article has moved to: https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2014/03/31/tenurespring20142/
Lauren RubensteinAssistant Professor of Psychology Anna Shusterman had an op-ed published in The Hartford Courant about a low-cost, intensive, and effective pre-K program piloted in Middletown last summer, which she argues could be a model for the nation. Pre-kindergarten preparation programs are critical to narrowing the achievement gap between low-income students starting kindergarten and their wealthier peers, she writes. Kindergarten Kickstart, a short-term summer program in which Wesleyan students taught alongside experienced teachers using research-based methods and curriculum, showed measurable improvements in kindergarten readiness after just five weeks. Read the op-ed here.
David Pesci(more…)
Anna Shusterman, assistant professor of psychology; Hilary Barth, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior; and Emily Slusser, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology, received a grant worth $25,000 from Mattel Philanthropy Programs. The grant was awarded on March 24. The grant allows the group to explore children's ability to learn from independent play with toys. Children will receive one of four kinds of toys for a period of two months, and their parents will be asked to bring the toys out daily. At the beginning and end of the study, children will participate in a series of brief measures, many of which…
Anna Shusterman, assistant professor of psychology, is the co-author of the article, "Early acquisition of the word 'two'," published in The Proceedings of the 2009 Boston University Conference on Language Development, by Cascadilla Press, 2010.
Nicaraguan Sign Language, developed only 30 years ago by Deaf children in Nicaragua needing a way to communicate, offers insight to ways an adapted language affects thought processes. In a new study, which was published June 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, co-author Anna Shusterman, assistant professor of psychology explains how human spatial cognition depends on the acquisition of specific aspects of spatial language. The article, titled “Evidence from an emerging sign language reveals that language supports spatial cognition,” is co-authored by Jennie Pyers (Wellesley), Ann Senghas (Barnard College), Elizabeth Spelke (Harvard) and Karen Emmorey (San…
Anna Shusterman, assistant professor of psychology, received a grant worth $716,227 from the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program on June 1. Shusterman's project is titled "The role of language in children's acquisition of number concepts." The grant will be applied over five years.
John SetzerIn the United States, Deaf people have had the ability to communicate by using sign language since the early 1800s. But in Central America’s largest nation of Nicaragua, the Deaf community had no formalized language until 30 years ago. This emerging language, known as Nicaraguan Sign Language, is the topic of a recent study by Anna Shusterman, assistant professor of psychology, and psychology major Lisa Drennan ’09. The language was first created by local children to communicate with their friends and family and is rapidly changing. “Nicaraguan Sign Language is certainly not a hodge-podge of different sign languages – it…