Peter Mundy

Position Title
Lisa Capps Professor of Education, Learning and Mind Sciences, School of Education

Bio

My name is Peter Mundy, and I am the Lisa Capps Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the MIND Institute, and a Distinguished Professor in the School of Education.  I trained as both a developmental psychologist (University of Miami) and a child clinical psychologist with a specialization in children with developmental disabilities. One part of my research focusses on understanding the role that attention, and especially joint attention plays in the problems with learning, language and social-cognition that affect individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). I’m also interested in research on learning in school aged children with ASD and how to improve classroom based education for these children. 

I became interested in these topics because, for me, the research demands trying to translate concepts and findings across developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience in the service of the concrete goal of improving outcomes for children.  I came to UC Davis in 2008 because of the opportunity to help to build bridges between research on Autism at the School of Medicine at the MIND Institute and research on Autism in the School of Education, as well as in Human Development and Psychology. I’m especially interested in my participation in the UCD Human Development group because I consider Developmental Psychology to be my “home discipline”. 

Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to support several terrific students from Human Development on extramural research grants in the School of Education, and the Lisa Capps Endowment for Research on Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Education in the Department of Psychiatry.

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