Striano ’95 to Give Talk at Holy Cross on Social-Cognitive Development of Infants

WORCESTER, Mass. – Dr. Tricia Striano, who earned a degree in psychology from the College of the Holy Cross in 1995, will give a talk as part of a psychology colloquium titled “Social Cognition in the First Year,” on April 3 at 4 p.m. in Rehm Library. The talk is free and open to the public.

Striano is researching social cognition in infants between birth and 12 months, trying to understand how they detect and process emotions, especially those that play a role in interpersonal interactions. Part of her research involves examining the neural systems that are involved in processing affective states, including brain systems that might be associated with atypical patterns of development such as autism.

Striano received her Ph.D. from Emory University, was head of the career development group on cultural ontogenesis at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and is now head of the research team for neurocognition and development at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and at Leipzig University’s Centre for Advanced Studies.

In 2004, Striano was awarded the prestigious Sofja Kovalevskaja Prize, an award of $1.2 million, by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany “to young scientists and scholars from abroad with outstanding research records.”