Two ICD doctoral dissertations honored with award from Society for Research in Child Development

A recent ICD PhD alumni and a doctoral candidate are recipients of the prominent Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation award from the Society for Research in Child Development, which will be presented at the upcoming 2023 biennial awards ceremony in March. Pearl Han Li, who graduated with her PhD in 2022, and Alyssa R. Palmer, a PhD candidate and current psychology clinical intern at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, were two of the five recipients selected for the award.

Pearl’s dissertation “Trust and Skepticism: Children’s use and evaluations of moral testimony across two cultures” focused on the role of testimony in children’s acquisition of moral knowledge. In two cross-cultural studies conducted in the United States and China, Pearl’s dissertation project explored which types of testimony are most powerful in moving children’s moral judgments, how children balance independent thinking and reliance on testimony when acquiring moral and empirical knowledge, as well as how parental and cultural values contribute to children’s moral agency and moral learning.

Pearl is currently a post-doctoral associate at Duke University’s Psychology and Neuroscience department, where she is working with Tamar Kushnir, PhD and Michael Tomasello, PhD to build on her dissertation work. Her current projects are assessing children’s appreciation of intellectual humility in the face of moral dilemmas and how collaborative agreement may influence children’s moral decision making.

“I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Melissa Koenig,” Li said. “I would like to thank her for challenging my intellectual thinking in her own thoughtful way, for being incredibly encouraging towards me as I grappled with balancing family and work as a new parent while working on my dissertation, and for making herself available whenever I’m in need. I also would like to thank everyone in the Early Language and Experience Lab and my amazing cohort for their support.”

Alyssa Palmer’s dissertation “Risk and resilience factor’s relation to internalizing and externalizing symptoms in early childhood” used advanced statistical methods to characterize how positive influences accumulate alongside sociodemographic risk and negative life events to affect young children’s mental health. Under the mentorship of Ann Masten and Dan Berry, she studied how protective systems across multiple levels (biological, behavioral, relational, and socioecological) promote early childhood mental health in the context of adversity.

Alyssa, who is in the developmental psychopathology and clinical science program, is completing her pre-doctoral clinical internship at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles on their Early Childhood Mental Health track. Her goals are to combine clinically meaningful research with active teaching, mentoring, and policy work to help families experiencing poverty improve multigenerational mental health.

“I am immensely grateful for the community of graduate students, including my cohort and lab mates for their immense support through graduate school and the dissertation process,” Palmer said.

Congratulations to Pearl and Alyssa on this recognition!