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Learning Research and
Development Center (LRDC)

Message from LRDC Director Charles Perfetti


The Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) is home to multidisciplinary research on human learning and education. Our research spans a wide range from the neural bases of learning and memory, through literacy, language, reasoning, and STEM learning, the social and developmental contexts that affect educational attainment and equity, and to large-scale efforts for educational improvement. We are pleased to share some of our research with the University of Pittsburgh community and the wider learning and educational sciences communities through these occasional reports of the LRDC Research News, prepared by Elizabeth Rangel, LRDC Director of Communications.

January 2023

 

SAVE THE DATE!  February 21 


LRDC will take part in the 2023 Pitt Day of Giving. Watch for details on how to donate in an upcoming email.
research news heading with yellow text and blue backsplash

AP Course Credit and Undergraduate Student Success


Policies that allow students to replace introductory courses with AP credit vary greatly among universities. Christian Schunn and his colleagues examine the repercussions. Read about the study on the LRDC website.

Ethics and Social-Justice Approach to Collecting and Using Demographic Data 


Lorraine Blatt, Nabila Jamal-Orozco, and colleagues introduce a framework to help psychologists make thoughtful decisions about the use of demographic data. Read more on the LRDC website.

Large Studies Reveal How Self‐report Measures Can Be Biased


Brian Galla and colleagues studied a measure to accurately assess student self-regulation. Read the full article on the LRDC website.
recent news and awards heading with yellow text and blue backsplash.

New LRDC Scientist Angela Stewart

Stewart joined Pitt in September as an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Information with a joint appointment as LRDC Research Scientist. Read about Stewart's work here.

Brian Galla in the Pittsburgh Parent

Galla's recent study about high-stakes testing was featured in "The psychological toll of high-stakes testing." Read the article here. 

Melissa Libertus in UK Daily News

Libertus was featured in UK Daily News "Should we study maths until we turn 18?"  Read the article here.

Recent Publications


Del Toro, J., & Wang, M. T. (2022). Police stops and school engagement: Examining cultural socialization from parents and schools as protective factors among African American adolescents. American Educational Research Journal.

Duricy, E., Durisko, C., Dickey, M. W., & Fiez, J. A. (2022). Comparing the reliability of virtual and in-person post-stroke neuropsychological assessment with language tasks. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology.

Elliott, L., Votruba-Drzal, E., Miller, P., Libertus, M.E., & Bachman, H.J. (2023). Unpacking the home numeracy environment: Examining dimensions of number activities in early childhood. Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

Roeser, R.W., Greenberg, M.T., Frazier, T., Galla, B.M., Semenov, A.D., & Warren, M.T. (2022). Beyond all splits: envisioning the next generation of science on mindfulness and compassion in schools for students. Mindfulness.

Nweze,T., Ezenwa, M., Ajaelu, C., Hanson, J.L., & Okoye, C. (2023). Cognitive variations following exposure to childhood adversity: Evidence from a pre-registered, longitudinal study.  eClinicalMedicine.

Miler-Adams, M. & Iriti, J. (Eds.). (2023). "The Free College Handbook: A Practitioner's Guide to Promise Research." Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Matsumura, L.C., Wang, E.L., Correnti, R., & Litman, D. (2023). Tasks and feedback: An exploration of students’ opportunity to develop adaptive expertise for analytic text-based writing. Assessing Writing.

Jha, R.R., Kumar, B.V.R., Pathak, S.K., Schneider, W., Bhavsar, A., & Nigam, A. (2023). Undersampled single-shell to MSMT fODF reconstruction using CNN-based ODE solver.
Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine.

Filipiak, P., Shepherd, T., Basler, L., Zuccolotto, A., Placantonakis, D.G., Schneider, W., Boada, F.E. & Baete, S.H. (2022). Stepwise stochastic dictionary adaptation improves microstructure reconstruction with orientation distribution function fingerprinting. Computational Diffusion MRI.

Tong, Y., Schunn, C.D, & Wang, H. (2023). Why increasing the number of raters only helps sometimes: Reliability and validity of peer assessment across tasks of different complexity. Studies in Educational Evaluation.

Dickman, K.D., Votruba-Drzal, E., Matthews, K.A., & Kamarck, T.W. (2022). Early life SES, childhood trauma exposures, and cardiovascular responses to daily life stressors in middle-aged adults. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

Wang, M. T., Henry, D., & Del Toro, J. (2022). Do black and white students benefit from racial socialization? School racial socialization, school climate, and youth academic performance during early adolescence. (2022) American Educational Research Journal.

*LRDC researchers' names appear in boldface
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