The department has strength across the life-span from infancy through old age. Clusters of faculty focus on infancy and early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence, and adulthood and aging. There is also a strong interest in developmental phenomena that cut across the life-span including biological, social, cognitive, and emotional development processes. Across the life-span, departmental researchers focus on the settings in which development occurs including families, day care settings, schools, neighborhoods, peer groups, and nursing homes, as well as the cultures in which these settings are embedded. Departmental faculty examine families from several perspectives.
Several researchers are interested in interpersonal relationship dynamics.
They closely study relationship partners' interactions, conflicts, and joint activities. Examples include understanding the precursors of early marital conflict or research on the impact of parental monitoring on adolescents' problem behavior. Other faculty are interested in the family as the unit of analysis and take a broader approach to the study of families. Other research takes an international, comparative approach as in the effort to understand the implications of social change for families in different cultural ecologies. Human Development Intervention.