Studying the Perception-Action System as a Model System for Understanding Development

Dr. Jodie M. Plumert received her B.A. in psychology from Kalamazoo College in 1985 and her PhD from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota in 1990. Her PhD thesis was supervised by the late Herbert L. Pick, Jr. She joined the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Iowa in 1990, where she is now a professor and a Starch Faculty Fellow. She served as chair of the department from 2011-2017, and recently received the Regents Award for Faculty Excellence from the University of Iowa. She is an associate director of the Safety Research Using Simulation (SAFER-SIM) University Transportation Center at the University of Iowa. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Psychological Science (APS). She served on the executive board of APA Division 7 from 2004-2007 and as an associate editor of the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (JECP) from 2007-2010. She now serves on the editorial boards of JECP and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, and on the Developmental Sciences College of Reviewers for the National Science Foundation. Her work focuses on the development of spatial memory and communication and on the role of immature perceptual-motor skills in unintentional childhood injuries. She co-directs the Hank Virtual Environments Laboratory, a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary laboratory that focuses on using virtual environments as laboratories for studying human behavior. She is one of a few researchers in the world with expertise in using immersive, interactive virtual reality technology to study how immature perceptual-motor skills put child cyclists and pedestrians at risk when crossing roads. This work has been published in both psychological science and computer science, and has received widespread media attention. She and her colleagues have received funding for this work from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the Toyota Motor Company.

Professor and Starch Faculty Fellow, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, The University of Iowa, USA