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Email: clearfmw@whitman.edu Phone: (509) 522-4427 Office: Maxey Hall 324; M 2:30-4, W 10-12 or by appt. |
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I was born and raised in New Jersey (the land of malls, Camaros, and big hair.) After high school I escaped to Middlebury College in Vermont, where I learned that nature is more than just a tree in the middle of a parking lot. I also learned that psychology is cool. After college, I started my journey west by going to graduate school at Indiana University in Bloomington. I earned my Ph.D., and then came to Whitman in the summer of 2001.I am a firm believer in Dynamic Systems Theory, which states that knowledge and other forms of cognition are inextricably linked to perception and movement. My research focuses on how these factors interact to produce behavior in infants.
I am currently exploring these relations in two behaviors. First, I explore navigational memory (how babies remember and move to a location in space) and how that changes during the transition from crawling to walking. My second area of research investigates what very young infants (5-month-olds) know about number, and how their visual attention affects their behavior in number tasks. In addition to developmental psychology, I teach such courses as the psychology of sex and gender, mathematical abilities in animals and humans, theories of development, and spatial navigation in humans and animals.
My husband Mitch also teaches at Whitman, in Core and Philosophy. We have two cats (the cutest in the department by far) who get much more of our time and attention than they should (and also too much food!). When we're not on campus, we're usually cooking up something fabulous, bringing our house out of the 1970s, or off in the wilderness somewhere. (If we're not back in a few days, send out the search party!)