People
Amy Needham (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
P.I., Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
email: amy.needham@duke.edu
Dr. Needham
received her B.A. in psychology from Knox College in 1987. She
went on to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
where she received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology in 1992.
After receiving her degree in 1992, she went to Duke and began
her research on infants' perceptual, cognitive, and motor development.
Dr. Needham's research has explored many questions in these three
areas of study, focusing primarily on questions involving interactions
between these domains. One question that has been of interest to
her for a number of years is how infants find boundaries around
objects. Her currest questions particularly focus on perceptual
and motor learning in infancy.
Klaus Libertus (M.A., Duke University)
Graduate Student
email: klaus.libertus@duke.edu
Klaus
received his B.S. from the University of Osnabrück (Germany) in
2004. In 2007, he received a M.A. from Duke University, where he
is currently pursuing a Ph.D. He has been a graduate student in
the Infant Perception lab since 2005. His research focuses on how
behavioral interventions such as simulated reaching experience affect
young infant’s motor skills and behavior and perception of objects,
people and actions. The attainment of new motor milestones, e.g.
reaching or walking, provides infants with new possibilities to explore
their surroundings. Changing infant’s motor abilities allows us to
identify how the growth of motor and cognitive skills are related. To
investigate these issues he assesses motor behavior, eye-gaze patterns and
temperament in both cross-sectional and longitudinal samples of infants
ranging from 2-months to 16-months of age.
Jennifer Gibson (B.S., Penn State University)
Graduate Student
email: jennifer.gibson@duke.edu
Jen
earned her B.S. in biobehavioral health from Penn State University at
University Park in 2007. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the Infant
Perception Lab. Her first primary interest is in the earliest coginitive
differences between typically developing children and those identified
as at risk for autism. She is particularly interested in the development
of visual processing biases and how biases may differ between typical
and clinical populations during the first 18 months. Her second primary
interest is understanding how infants utilize sensory information to
develop reaching skills as well as how early simulated reach
experiences could facilitate motor behavior in populations in which
these behaviors are typically delayed. Specifically, she is interested in
midline motor development in premature infants who are born several
months early.
Current Undergraduate Students
Alice Ellmer
Brittany Lambertus
Stephanie Maestre
Diana Okwali
Addie Price
Prithviraj (Roy) Singha
Infant Perception Lab Alumni
Tracy Barrett, Ph.D.
Gwenden Dueker, Ph.D.
Marissa Greif, Ph.D., Post-doctoral Fellow
Jordy Kaufman, Ph.D.
Susan Ormsbee Holly, M.D., Ph.D.