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Birkbeck psychology PhD wins US psychology award for dissertation

Working mother of two praises Birkbeck for valuing students with differing needs

Dr Kristen Swan Tummeltshammer

Birkbeck psychology PhD graduate, Dr Kristen Swan Tummeltshammer, has been recognised by the American Psychological Association (APA) with an award for research excellence.

Kristen (pictured above) has received the APA ‘Division 7: Developmental Psychology’ Dissertation Award for the PhD she completed at Birkbeck’s Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development (CBCD), under the supervision of Dr Natasha Kirkham and Professor Denis Mareschal.

APA’s Division 7: Developmental Psychology promotes research in the field of developmental psychology and high standards in the application of scientific knowledge to educational, child care, policy, and related settings. Each year, the Division selects recipients for a small handful of awards, including the Outstanding Dissertation Awards for new PhDs which Kristen is this year the recipient of.

About the PhD study: Visual attention in infants

  • Kristen’s dissertation focused on the topic of visual attention and learning mechanisms in infants. She investigated how infants learn about the structure of the visual environment, make predictions about upcoming visual events, and learn to distribute their attention toward relevant locations and events.
  • The study encompassed five experiments with infants ranging from 4 to 14 months of age and used a variety of experimental methods, including looking time, eye-tracking, and event-related potentials.
  • One of the findings of her study ­– published in Psychological Science – was that eight-month-old infants are sensitive to the reliability of an adult's gaze; that is, they will follow the gaze of an adult who has consistently looked at interesting objects in the past, but will not follow the gaze of an adult who has often looked in the wrong locations. This suggests that infants have the capacity to monitor the reliability of information sources.

Kristen carried out her dissertation within the CBCD, and was funded by a Birkbeck Teaching Assistantship in the Department of Psychological Science. Regarding her award, she said she was “honoured and grateful” for the recognition.

She said: “This award is extremely energizing for me. I hope and strive to continue producing quality research that is worthy of the APA's esteem.”

A working mother with two young sons, Kristen added she was grateful to have had the support of female mentors and to have undertaken her PhD at a university that recognises and values students with many different needs and circumstances.

She said: “There is still a large gender-gap in academia, particularly in the sciences, and I feel I am an example of how universities like Birkbeck can make a positive impact on closing that gap by supporting women who have families and other demands to balance.”

Dr Kirkham, who supervised Kristen’s dissertation said: “I am so happy and proud to congratulate Kristen on her well-deserved APA dissertation award. Kristen is one of those rare students who could naturally combine scientific rigour with a talent for writing and communication. It was an absolute pleasure working with her, and I am thrilled to see her research lauded in this way.”

Current research: Brown University

Kristen is now a post-doctoral fellow at Brown University, USA, in the department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences. She is conducting research in the developmental cognitive neuroscience lab of Dr. Dima Amso, and is funded by the National Institutes of Health on a National Research Service Award (NRSA).

Her current research examines reward and autonomous choice influence learning in infancy and early childhood, and she is using a combination of behavioural, physiological, and neuroimaging methods.

This is a second consecutive APA Division 7 Dissertation award for the CBCD, with Dr Maria Laura Filippetti winning last year for her PhD dissertation – exploring the development of body perception in infancy – which was supervised by Professor Mark Johnson. Dr Filipetti carried out her PhD at Birkbeck under the Marie Curie Initial Training Network PhD Fellowship.
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