Event
DevSci Colloquium: "Building meaning builds teens' brains..."
Wednesday, November 1, 2023
12:15 p.m.
1107 Benjamin Building
https://education.umd.edu/news/events/hd-colloquium-series-mary-helen-immordino-yang-phd
Speaker: Mary Helen Immordino-Yang (University of Southern California)
Title: "Building meaning builds teens’ brains: Mid-adolescents’ transcendent thinking predicts young adult psychosocial outcomes via brain network development"
Abstract: A major achievement of mid-adolescent development is the capacity to integrate abstract cognitive construals with affective experiences to construct meaningful, transcendent narratives about oneself and the world—constructing identities and engaging with complex social issues. In this talk, I will discuss our longitudinal, transdisciplinary studies of the neural and psychological processes underlying such capacities with Los Angeles-area adolescents from diverse backgrounds. Findings from in-depth interviews paired with neuroimaging reveal coordinated psychological, behavioral and neural processes by which youth transcend concrete, empathic reactions to also experience values-driven emotions reliant on abstract thought, such as moral inspiration, curiosity and compassion. They further reveal dispositions toward abstract construals in social contexts that predict subsequent brain development irrespective of IQ and socio-economic status, and in turn young adult life satisfaction and relationship quality, in a developmental cascade. The findings reveal a novel predictor of mid-adolescents’ neural development, and underscore the active role adolescents play in their own brain development through the meaning they make of the social world. I will discuss implications for secondary education, and first learnings from new interview, classroom observation and neuroimaging studies of highly effective secondary teachers in urban contexts.
Bio: Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang is Fahmy Attallah Professor of Humanistic Psychology and Professor of Education, Psychology and Neuroscience at University of Southern California, and founding director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE.USC.edu). She studies the neuropsychological development of emotion and self-awareness, and connections to social, cognitive and moral development. She uses interdisciplinary studies of narratives and feelings to uncover experience-dependent neural mechanisms contributing to identity, intrinsic motivation, deep learning, and abstract thought. Her work has a special focus on adolescents and teachers from low-SES communities, whom she also involves as junior scientists and collaborators (respectively) in her work. A former teacher, she has received numerous national and international awards for her research and impact on society, especially education.
