UC Merced Magazine - Volume XVII, Issue 3

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Professor Er icWal le's focus is on em otion and social developmen t in veryyoung child ren. Image by Elena Zhukova •

UC MERCED RESEARCH HAS IMMEDIATE IMPACTS IN THE COMMUNITY UC Merced has innumerable research projects with major implications for both the local community and the world. Just a few examples: • Wastewater monitoring that has effectively measured COVID-19 and other infections, helping public officials make crucial decisions. • A smart farm that will provide real-time, scalable data on everything from pest management to watering strategies for researchers at UC Merced and other entities. • The placement of solar panels over canals in a project that promises to provide energy, reduce evaporation and lower maintenance costs. • The study of Valley fever, a disease that's increasing in prevalence, caught when people inhale fungal spores stirred up by disturbing soil, such as through agriculture or construction. But in addition to these high-profile projects, there are a multitude of ways UC Merced researchers interact with and benefit the community nearly every day. Take the university's Child and Family Development Group, a consortium of UC Merced faculty who collectively study child and family development and who work with parents, children and caregivers in the community through workshops, events and research projects. "Many of the labs in the Child and Family Development Group have various ongoing research activities in which children and families can take part," said psychology Professor Eric Walle, who is the area head of the Developmental Psychology Program. One of Walle's current projects examines what's called "emotion brokering." This term refers to how people help others navigate differences in when and how people express emotions across cultures. For example, a child from a Latinx household may help their parent understand emotion expression norms in the United States. This project includes investigating the process of brokering novel emotion norms in young children, as well as examining the effects of emotion brokering on mental health and well-being in young adults.

Another of Walle's projects examines how college students and parent-child pairs talk differently about different emotions. Several other researchers have child development projects, as well: Professor Heather Bortfield is studying joint attention, when two people share an interest in an object or event and there is understanding between them that both are interested. "For example, a parent and child may both look at a toy they're playing with," described Bortfeld. "Their mutual interest in the toy may involve them using eye contact, gestures, or speech to get 'on the same page' about what they are looking at. These skills start to develop soon after birth, and by the age of 3, children are usually competent at gaining and maintaining joint attention from adults and peers. We are interested in documenting how this process unfolds in real time between a parent and their child." In a project funded by the National Science Foundation, Professor Rose Scott is investigating epistemic trust, or trust to teach new information, and social trust - trust that people will provide social support and keep their promises. "We are investigating how epistemic and social trust develops in early childhood, and whether children consider different factors when making these two types of trust judgments," said Scott. "We are also investigating whether children's decisions of who to trust are influenced by social categories (e.g., race, ethnicity) or children's environments."

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