Development and plasticity of control and control beliefs

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• Professor Nikolaus Steinbeis, UCL
• Tuesday 18 March 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Hybrid: in-person in Cambridge & online via Teams.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Louise Gray.

In-person: Ground Floor Seminar Room, Old Cavendish Building, Free School Lane / Teams Meeting ID: 359 964 811 470, Passcode: F6gXFU

Abstract

My research focusses on understanding processes that regulate our thoughts and actions and their mechanistic role in driving healthy psychological development. I will present recent and ongoing experimental work on two such processes, namely cognitive control and control beliefs.

In the first part I will present data from a recently completed randomized control trial aiming to improve cognitive control in 235 6-11 year old children showing no effects across a host of behavioural and neural outcomes. In the second half I will present more recent work on the relationship between control beliefs and stress. I will show data on (i) the buffering effects of heightened sense of control against later stress and (ii) that control beliefs shape adaptive responding to stress.

I will discuss these findings in line with recent frameworks characterising control as a highly rational and dynamic process and outline implications for interventions.

Biography:

I did my thesis at the Max-Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences on the neuroscience of music and was awarded my PhD in 2008. I then moved to the University of Zurich for a postdoc in developmental social neuroscience at the Institute for Empirical Economics. I then returned to the Max-Planck Institute as Senior Researcher and Group Leader.

After fellowships at the Weill Cornell Medical School and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute I joined the Department of Developmental Psychology at the University of Leiden as an Assistant Professor in 2015. In 2017 I moved to UCL ’s Division of Psychology and Language Sciences as an Associate Professor and became Full Professor of Developmental Neuroscience there in 2021.

I have received various accolades and fellowships (i.e. Jacobs Research Fellowship, Humboldt Fellowship, German-Israeli Foundation Fellowship) and my work has been funded by the Jacobs Foundation, the German Research Foundation, the European Research Council, and the Economic and Social Research Council.

Teams link

Teams Meeting ID: 359 964 811 470, Passcode: F6gXFU

(Or in person: Ground Floor Seminar Room, Old Cavendish Labs, Rayleigh Wing, New Museums Site – opposite Student Services).

This talk is part of the Centre for Child, Adolescent & Family Research Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Centre for Child, Adolescent & Family Research Seminar Series
• Hybrid: in-person in Cambridge & online via Teams
• Psychology talks and events
• Yishu's list

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