In this week’s SYNC Spotlight, Mark Mulder tells us about his work on making Open Science easier. Curious how? Read it here.
In this week’s SYNC Spotlight, Karlijn Hermans explains why it is important to motivate children to become curious about science! How can we spark their curiosity and what did they learn in our social lab during #expeditienext? Read it here.
In this week’s SYNC Spotlight, Simone Dobbelaar writes about the importance of in-person conferences. Read her blogpost here.
In this week’s SYNC Spotlight, Mara tells us her favorite things of being a scientist and how this is related to her research interest. Read her blogpost here.
On 5 April 2022, Bianca Westhoff will defend her PhD dissertation, entitled: ‘Learning together: Behavioral, computational, and neural mechanisms underlying social learning in adolescence’.
The overarching goal of this thesis was to examine the behavioral, computational, and neural mechanisms underlying social learning in adolescence. The first aim was to examine developmental patterns across adolescence of two forms of social learning: (1) learning about other people, specifically, whether they are (un)cooperative and (un)trustworthy, and (2) learning for other people (prosocial learning) to know what actions may benefit or help others. A second aim was to examine underlying mechanisms and factors that account for age-related and individual differences in social learning.
The first chapter’s findings point to early-mid adolescence as a developmental window for a rapid change in adaptive social learning, with improvements especially in the cooperative domain.
In the second chapter, the results point to adolescence as a period for developing adaptive social trust learning abilities, which become increasingly flexible from mid-adolescence onward. Yet, one’s family environment may impact adolescent’s adaptive social learning abilities.
These findings in the third chapter point to early-to-mid adolescence as a developmental phase in which adolescents become more open-minded about possible individual differences in other people’s trustworthiness, which allows them to flexibly learn that some people are highly trustworthy while others are not.
The findings from the last chapter show that prosocial learning abilities improve early-to-mid adolescence on both a behavioral, computational, and neural level. The various indices provide a complementary perspective showing that especially learning for others undergoes developmental transitions, consistent with the conclusions of the previous chapters showing that age-related differences are most pronounced for other-oriented behaviors.
Proud promotors: Eveline Crone & Anna van Duijvenvoorde.
In this week’s SYNC Spotlight, Stephan Heunis writes about his job as a Research Software Engineer and all the skills and tools that come with it. Read his blogpost here.
In this week’s SYNC Spotlight, Michelle Achterberg advocates why Development Matters! On March 22th, she will chair a discussion on Optimal conditions for children to develop with Arne Popma & Károly Illy on the LeidenCID Development Matters Conference. Read her blogpost here!
In this week’s SYNC Spotlight, Fabienne van Rossenberg writes about the bridge between science and society and the best way to communicate with societal partners. Read her blogpost here.
In this week’s #syncspotlight Kayla Green, Lysanne te Brinke and Fabienne van Rossenberg explain how the use of informative videos can enhance scientific information accessibility for youth. Moreover, the researchers explain how this may contribute to more diverse and representative research samples in the field of developmental psychology/neuroscience. Read their blogpost here.
In this week’s #syncspotlight, Lina van Drunen explains why we all love to perform, dance, or listen to music in our daily lives & why we at the same time also observe many individual differences in musical capabilities. We’ve all got the music in us?? Read her blogpost here.