Programs
Students in consultation with faculty advisors develop an area of specialization (program) appropriate to their professional goals and research interests. Some of the department's central areas of specialization are described below.
Comparative Life Course
The Department of Comparative Human Development has long had a focus on development throughout the life span. Indeed, one of the unifying principles that cuts across the department is that there is a deep interest, not merely in charting change over time, but in understanding the mechanisms and principles that underlie that change at all levels. Faculty and students in the department conduct developmental research in a wide variety of domains (cognitive, social, emotional, physical) and species (humans, primates, rodents). Ongoing projects include: ethnological studies of biosocial development from infancy though adulthood and aging; effects of psychosocial deprivation on psychological state and risk for disease; parent child relationships across the life course; risk and resilience in development; social emotional development in early childhood; social class and ethnic differences in socialization; genetic and developmental factors in psychosocial development; naturalistic studies of children in school environments; language development as a creative process; studies of how children and adults understand and tell narratives; the role of nonverbal behavior in learning and cognitive development; the role of the linguistic and cultural environment in the child’s acquisition of language; language socialization; the role of sociocultural context in cognitive development.
Health, Culture and Mental Health
This program is designed for students interested in combining normative social science inquiry with focused study in the area of mental health, as preparation for a career of research and teaching. This course of study involves multidisciplinary inquiry into the processes and determinants of personality, social and cognitive development throughout the life course, and the comparative study of suffering and healing systems. Program faculty are presently involved with mental health research in three interrelated fields: (1) the study of psychopathology, vulnerability and resilience across the life course; (2) the study of psychotherapy and comparable systems of personal change; (3) the study of health and optimal functioning, coping strategies and creativity. Research in the personality area encompasses both traditional perspectives on the study of persons and social life and emerging perspectives focusing on such areas as the interplay of cognition and emotion in personal life and in culture, and language and discourse as relevant in understanding personality and social life. The program includes faculty working from the disciplinary perspectives of personality, social and clinical psychology, anthropology, political science, and biology. Relevant faculty and resources of the University outside the Department of Comparative Human Development will also be available to students.
Cultural Psychology and Psychological Anthropology
The Department of Comparative Human Development is a leading center for training in psychological anthropology, cultural psychology, the study of culture and mental health, and the cross cultural study of human development. The aim of the program is to document and explain ethnic and cultural sources of diversity in emotional and somatic functioning, self organization, moral evaluation, social cognition and human development. Ethnographic field work both in the United States and abroad is an important component of this program, although multiple methods (qualitative and quantitative, observational, clinical and experimental) are applied to the study of similarities and differences in psychological functioning across human populations.
Members of the faculty and students have conducted field studies of child socialization practices in the nations of the Pacific; of culture specific and universal structures in cognitive development; identity and self concept of Native American youth; of moral development, conceptions of the life course, and explanations of suffering in India and the United States; of modes of thought and their relationship to linguistic structures in contemporary Mayan communities in Mexico, and among various ethnic groups in the city of Chicago. The program encourages comparative study of psychological functioning (mentalities) in various high civilizations, including India, Japan, China, and the Middle East, as well as research on psychological topics in local communities around the world.
Comparative Behavioral Biology
This program investigates behavioral processes at the social, psychological and biological levels of organization in both humans and nonhuman animals. Current research is concentrated in three main areas. In the area of behavioral and reproductive endocrinology, research conducted with rodents and humans investigates the social and behavioral control of fertility and reproduction and the role of hormone behavior interactions in development throughout the life span. Specific topics of interest include mechanisms and function of estrous and menstrual synchrony, facultative adjustment of sex ratios, pheromonal communication, mate choice, reproductive senescence, psychosomatics in obstetrics and gynecology, gonadal and stress axes, learning, and the behavioral modulation of the immune function. In the area of comparative development, we use nonhuman models of parenting and development to investigate social, emotional, and endocrine aspects of mother infant attachment and infant development, with particular emphasis on interindividual variability both within and outside the normal range. Other topics of interest include affiliative and aggressive behavior, mating strategies, nonverbal communication and social cognition in rodents, primates and humans. In the area of social neuroscience, one topic of interest is evaluative processes, e.g., affective, attitudinal, or emotional operations by which individuals discriminate hostile from hospitable environments. Of interest as well is in the role of social and autonomic factors in individuals endocrine and cellular immune response to stress and illness vulnerability. Throughout, the research approach is characterized by the integration of social and biological levels of analysis.
Language, Communication and Cognition
This program area supports research and training on how language and other forms of communication relate to cognition. Particular emphases are on the role of language in thinking and the use of comparative perspectives to address this issue. Among the more important comparisons are those across different languages, institutional settings, cultures, ages, and species drawing in each case on the relevant disciplines concerned with those areas.
