Texas Tech University

Human Development and Family Sciences

BioSocial Interplay in Development Lab

Our Research

We study the development of individual differences in cognitive abilities and educational attainments in children and young adolescents. Our research incorporates genetic, physiological, eye-tracking, and behavioral approaches, and examines how factors at these various levels interact with environmental context (e.g., socioeconomic backgrounds, chaotic household environments, and harsh parenting) to produce diverse developmental trajectories in students' achievement outcomes. Another component of our research is to study how child characteristics, in turn, help shape their own environment (e.g., how they are parented). In our research, we utilize a variety of kinship designs (e.g., twin design, adoption design, and family design) and combine them with multi-wave longitudinal data and advanced statistical modeling to reveal the complex transactional processes in development.

Upcoming Research Projects

Our ongoing research examines the roles that emotional and motivational factors play in the development of mathematical competency by investigating the real-time impacts of emotion and motivation on math problem solving as well as the long-term impacts of emotion and motivation on engagement in math learning in and out of school.

We are actively recruiting families with 4th to 6th graders to participate in our research. For more information, please see the contact page.

TTU HDFS Parent of 4th to 6th Grade Research Study

BioSocial Interplay in Development Lab