Faculty

Research Interests

Dr. Carver studies the brain basis of cognitive and social developmental change in the transition from infancy to the early toddler years. Near the end of the first year of life, infants begin to develop the ability to remember information over very long intervals. Dr. Carver’s research examines changes in the brain that allow this long-term memory to develop. In addition to developments in cognition, infants at the end of the first year of life form long-lasting relationships with caregivers, and begin to use caregivers as a source of information about how to behave. For example, in the last half of the first year of life, infants begin to look to their parents’ facial expressions to understand how to interpret unusual situations that they encounter. Dr. Carver conducts research on changes in the brain that are associated with such changes in social behavior.

Selected Publications

Carver, L. J., & Bauer, P. J. (1999). When the event is more than the sum of its parts: Nine-month-olds’ long-term ordered recall. Memory, 7, 147-174.

Carver, L. J., Bauer, P.J., & Nelson, C. A. (2000). Associations between infant brain activity and recall memory. Developmental Science, 3, 234-246.

Nelson, C. A., Monk, C. S., Lin, J., Carver, L. J., Thomas, K. M., & Truwitt, C. (2000). Functional neuroanatomy of spatial working memory in children. Developmental Psychology, 36, 109-116.

Carver, L. J. & Bauer, P. J. (2001). The dawning of a past: The emergence of long-term explicit memory in infancy. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 726-745.

Dawson, G., Carver, L. J., Meltzoff, A. N., Panagiotides, H., McPartland, J., and Webb, S. J. (2002). Neural correlates of face recognition in young children with autism spectrum disorder. Child Development, 73, 700-717.