Psychology Home Page | Faculty

	Jodie M. Plumert
	Associate Professor

Address   Department of Psychology E11 SSH The University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242 (319) 335-2477 email: jodie-plumert@uiowa.edu   Education   Kalamazoo College, Psychology, B.A., 1985 University of Minnesota, Child Psychology, Ph.D., 1990

	Courses Taught
	Introduction to Child Development (31:014) Cognitive Development of Children (31:114) Cognitive Development (31:218)

	Research Interests
	Spatial Memory and Communication One of the major problems confronting us as we operate in everyday life is keeping track of and communicating about where things are. (Think about how many times you tried to remember where something was today or how many times someone else asked you to describe where something was today). In order to remember and communicate effectively about the vast number of locations around us, we need some kind of scheme for organizing spatial information. My work on children's spatial cognitive development focuses on two fundamental organizational processes for structuring spatial information: 1) forming spatial groups, and 2) nesting smaller spatial units within larger ones. Spatial groups are formed by clustering locations that fall within a bounded area or near a salient landmark. For example, we might think of a telephone, stapler, book, and a pen as belonging together because they are located on a desk. Spatial units are nested by encoding the hierarchical spatial relations that hold between progressively larger landmarks and spatial regions. For example, a telephone might be known as on a desk in an office in the psychology building. Over the last several years, I've conducted numerous studies of how children and adults use these two organizational principles to remember and communicate about locations. To learn more about this research, click here.
	Childhood Safety Accidental injuries are the leading cause of death in children under age 18. Despite growing national concern over promoting children's safety, however, very little is known about why children have so many accidents. Increasingly, overviews of strategies for reducing unintentional childhood injuries have called for a better understanding of the developmental factors that contribute to the occurrence of these injuries. Over the last several years, I have been developing a program of research aimed at understanding the causes of unintentional childhood injuries. The primary question underlying this work is how do immature perceptual and cognitive skills put children at risk for injury? To learn more about this research, click here.

	Publications
	Schwebel, D. C., Binder, S. C., McDermott, J. A., & Plumert, J. M. (in press). Is there a link between children's motor abilities and unintentional injuries? Journal of Safety Research. Plumert, J. M. (in press). Children's overestimation of their physical abilities: Links to injury proneness. To appear in G. Savelsbergh, K. Davids, J. van derKamp, & S. Bennett (Eds.), Development of movement coordination in children: Applications in the field of ergonomics, health sciences and sport. Taylor and Francis. Oakes, L. M., & Plumert, J. M. (2002). Variability in thirteen-month-old infants' touching patterns in the sequential-touching task. Infant Behavior and Development, 25, 529-549. Schwebel, D. C., Dawes, B. A., & Plumert, J. M. (2002). Using an injury diary to describe the ecology of children's daily injuries. Journal of Safety Research. 33, 301-319. Hund, A. M., Plumert, J. M., & Benney, C. (2002). Experiencing nearby locations together in time: The role of spatial-temporal contiguity in children's memory for location. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 82, 200-225. Hund, A. M., & Plumert, J. M. (2002). Delay-induced bias in children's memory for location. Child Development, 73, 829-840. Nichols-Whitehead, P., & Plumert, J. M. (2001). The influence of boundaries on young children's searching and gathering. Journal of Cognition and Development, 2, 367-388.      Plumert, J. M., Spalding, T. L., & Nichols-Whitehead, P. (2001). Preferences for ascending and descending hierarchical organization in spatial communication. . Memory & Cognition, 29, 274-284.      Plumert, J. M., & Hund, A. M. (2001). The development of memory for location: What role to spatial prototypes play? Child Development, 72, 370-384.      Plumert, J. M., & Hawkins, A. M. (2001). Biases in young children's communication about spatial relations: Containment versus proximity. Child Development, 72, 22-36.      Schwebel, D. C., Plumert, J. M., & Pick, H. L. (2000). Integrating basic and applied developmental research: A new model for the twenty-first century. Child Development. 71, 222-230.      Schwebel, D. C., & Plumert, J. M. (1999). Longitudinal and concurrent relations between temperament, ability estimation, and accident proneness. Child Development, 70, 700-712.      Plumert, J. M., & Schwebel, D. C. (1997). Social and temperamental influences on children's overestimation of their physical abilities: Links to accident proneness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 67, 317-337.      Plumert, J. M., & Strahan, D. (1997). Relations between task structure and developmental changes in children's use of spatial clustering strategies. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 15, 495-514.      Oakes, L. M., Plumert, J. M., Lansink, J. M., & Merryman, J. D. (1996). Evidence for task-dependent categorization in infancy. Infant Behavior and Development, 19, 425-440.      Plumert, J. M. (1996). Young children's ability to detect ambiguity in descriptions of location. Cognitive Development, 11, 375-396.      Plumert, J. M., & Nichols-Whitehead, P. (1996). Parental scaffolding of young children's spatial communication. Developmental Psychology, 32, 523-532.      Plumert, J. M. (1995). Relations between children's overestimation of their physical abilities and accident proneness. Developmental Psychology, 31, 866-876.      Plumert, J. M., Carswell, C., DeVet, K., & Ihrig, D. (1995). The content and organization of communication about object locations. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 477-498.      Plumert, J. M., Ewert, K., & Spear, S. J. (1995). The early development of children's communication about nested spatial relations. Child Development, 66, 959-969.      Plumert, J. M. (1994). Flexibility in children's use of spatial and categorical organizational strategies in recall. Developmental Psychology, 30, 738-747.      Plumert, J. M., Pick, H. L., Jr., Marks, R. A., Kintsch, A. S., & Wegesin, D. (1994). Locating objects and communicating about locations: Organizational differences in children's searching and direction-giving. Developmental Psychology, 30, 443-453.      Plumert, J. M. (1993). The development of children's spatial knowledge: Implications for geographic education. Cartographic Perspectives, 16, 9-18.      Craton, L. G., Elicker, J., Plumert, J. M., & Pick, H. L., Jr. (1990). Children's use of frames of reference in communication of spatial location. Child Development, 61, 1528-1543.      Sancilio, M. F. M., Plumert, J. M., & Hartup, W. W. (1989). Friendship and aggressiveness as determinants of conflict outcomes in middle childhood. Developmental Psychology, 25, 812-819.

	Grant Support
	"An Investigation of Children's Bicycling Safety Using an Interactive, Immersive Bicycling Simulator." Jodie M. Plumert (P.I.), Joseph Kearney, & James Cremer, University of Iowa Injury Prevention Research Center, 1997-1998 (R49-CCR703640 National Center for Injury Prevention and Control). "The Development of Memory for Object Locations" Jodie M. Plumert (P.I.), National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), 7/1/98 - 6/30/01 (R03-HD36761), $145,120. "Virtual Environments as Laboratories for Studying Human Behavior: Modeling, Testing, and Validation" Joseph Kearney (P.I.), James Cremer (Co-P.I), & Jodie Plumert (Co-P.I), National Science Foundation (NSF), 10/1/00 - 9/30/03, $515,935. (IIS 00-02535) "Instrumentation for a Virtual Environment Laboratory to Study Human Behavior" James Cremer (P.I.), Joseph Kearney (Co-P.I.), & Jodie Plumert (Co-P.I.), National Science Foundation (NSF), 2/1/02-1/31/05, $100,000 ($66,665 NSF, 33,335 UI). "Temperament as a Risk Factor for Bicycling Injuries" Jodie M. Plumert (P.I.), Joseph Kearney (C.I.), & James Cremer (C.I.), National Center for Injury Prevention and Control/ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through the UI Injury Prevention Research Center (Craig Zwerling, P.I.), 9/1/03-8/31/07, $231,525 in direct costs (CCR703640-13).