Developmental Recent Graduates

(Ph.D, 2024)

Helen completed her PhD in Developmental Psychology in 2024 under the supervision of Dr. Toby Mintz. During her time at USC, she published several papers examining statistical learning in both infants and adults. Her dissertation focused on the cognitive mechanisms underlying statistical learning in infants and adult second language learners, specifically exploring how language structure and bilingualism influence the detection of statistical regularities. Helen is currently a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia, where she is continuing her research on bilingualism and early language acquisition with Dr. Janet Werker and Dr. Alexis Black.

(Ph.D, 2024)

Vicky completed her Ph.D. in Psychology at USC and worked with Dr. Henrike Moll. She is interested in children’s social cognition. Specifically, she wants to explore how children understand others’ intentions and beliefs, as well as their influences on subsequent behaviors.  She is currently a Game User Research at Activision Blizzard.

(Postdoc, 2024)

Xiaoye Xu was a Postdoctoral Scholar working with Dr. Santiago Morales. She received her Ph.D. in Family and Human Development, with specialization in Measurement and Statistical Analysis from Arizona State University, working with Drs. Tracy Spinrad and Nancy Eisenberg. Xiaoye received her M.A. in Social Psychology from San Francisco State University, and her B.A. in Psychology from Smith College. She is interested in examining the relations between parental behaviors and children’s self-regulation, potential mediators and moderators in the relations, and outcomes of self-regulation like children’s prosocial behavior or psychopathology. She is also interested in using a multi-method approach including questionnaire, behavioral, physiological, and neuroimaging methods to study regulatory processes and related outcomes across development. Her dissertation was a meta-analysis on bidirectional relations between parenting behaviors and children’s effortful control. She is now an Assistant Professor at SUNY Cortland.

(Ph.D, 2019)

Sarah is a recent graduate from USC who worked primarily with Dr. David Schwartz but also interacted frequently with JoAnn Farver. Sarah was a very productive scholar while at USC, publishing multiple papers that examined aggression, victimization, and popularity in adolescent peer groups. Her dissertation (which has now lead to two publications) explored the role of gossip and rumor spreading among popular adolescents and also identified high status victims of bullying.  Sarah is currently a NIH funded post-doctoral researcher with a research group at Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands). She also holds and affiliation with the INVEST Research Flagship Center/Psychology at the University of Turku.

(Ph.D, 2019)

Jackie completed her PhD in Clinical Science in 2019. She worked closely with Stan Huey (Clinical) and JoAnn Farver (Developmental) to examine the relations among parenting behaviors and mental health outcomes among adolescents in Hong Kong. She has been a Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies at NUS in Singapore. Shortly, she will be transitioning to an Assistant Professor position in Clinical Psychology at the National Institute of Education, NTU in Singapore. Her current research broadly focuses on understanding how sociocultural contexts, such as social class, immigration, and ethnicity, influence risk and resilience in youth and their families; and on designing and evaluating interventions to improve mental health and educational outcomes. She is particularly interested in identifying factors that contribute to social disparities and developing interventions that promote equity. She has presented her work at major conferences in the United States and Europe, and has published in peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Clinical and Consulting Psychology and the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology.