1:03 p.m., April 11, 2007--Rachel Keen, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will give a talk on infant development at 3 p.m., Friday, April 13, in 116 Gore Hall.

Keen's lecture, “Emergence of an Action Plan,” is based on her research on the behavior of infants 9-24 months old and is sponsored by UD's biomechanics and movement sciences program.

Keen, who is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an international learned society whose members are drawn from science, scholarship, business, public affairs and the arts, is a recognized leader in the study of child development. She has been a member of the University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty since 1968 and has developed four lines of research, beginning with cardiac orienting and conditioning in human infants.

In the early 1980s, she began focusing on auditory localization and pitch perception in neonates and infants and developed an innovative strategy to study sound perception using a reaching-in-the-dark paradigm. Since then, she has extended this paradigm to study memory, object permanence, and cognitive processing in infants and toddlers.

The lecture is free and open to the public, and participants who want to learn more about Keen's research also can do so by going to [www.umass.edu/loop/talkingpoints/articles/33813.php] and [www.umass.edu/neuro/faculty/files/clifton.html].

For more information on the event, call (302) 831-3697.