Melissa Burch

Melissa Burch, associate professor of cognitive development, received her B.A. in psychology from Franklin and Marshall College. She earned her Ph.D. in child development with a minor in interpersonal relationships from the University of Minnesota.

Melissa's research interests center on memory development, particularly memory for personal experiences. She has been exploring how parental verbal support may contribute to children's ability to recall the past.

In addition, she is interested in how emotion may affect reports of past experiences and how parents and children talk about these events.

She is currently examining autobiographical memory from a cross-cultural perspective to study how different socialization experiences may relate to the detail included in memory reports.

Recent and Upcoming Courses

The Emergence of Literacy
The majority of adults are able to read fluently. However, when children learn to read, the process is dependent on a number of skills and requires a great deal of adult guidance. In this course we will discuss the cultural importance of literacy across societies and throughout childhood. We will focus on the development of the complex skill of reading, including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and higher-order processes that contribute to decoding and text comprehension. Because instruction can play a determining factor in children's acquisition of literacy skills, we will study early reading materials and examine practices that are employed at home and in the classroom to facilitate the acquisition of these skills. We will also collaborate with a local elementary school to develop resources for families to support language and literacy engagement at home. Evaluation will be based on class participation, a series of short papers, and a longer final project.
Field Study
Cultural Perspectives on Child Development
How does culture influence child development? How do the values, norms, and expectations of a group shape socialization processes? What is the child's role in contributing to social interactions and how might this vary across cultural and social settings? In this course we will move beyond examining group differences to discussing the implications of cultural practices and values for understanding development. We will explore psychological and anthropological literature to consider different perspectives and methodologies to examine how sociocultural context shapes behaviors and development. We will also consider how views of childhood vary across cultures and are reflected in social interactions and cultural routines and systems. Students will be responsible for facilitating discussions, presenting articles, writing short response papers, and completing an integrative final paper on a topic of their choice. A previous course in psychology or childhood studies is required.