Research Interests and Publications:

Dr. Pfeifer is interested in the neural and behavioral correlates of self and social development from middle childhood to middle adolescence. Her neuroimaging research addresses two broad topics: (i) examining developmental changes in self-knowledge retrieval, reflected self-appraisal processes, and other forms of self-evaluation such as that implicated in self-conscious emotions, as well as (ii) understanding the development of systems that support advanced social perspective-taking abilities, as well as the more basic mentalizing mechanisms that facilitate our understanding of other individuals' inner states (e.g., via shared neural representations of our own and others' emotions). She is also interested in how various aspects of adolescent development (e.g., personal and social identities, intergroup attitudes, or puberty) modulate the neural activity associated with general social perceptual processes.  Dr. Pfeifer has been involved for several years with an ongoing longitudinal study of adolescent brain development.  This large dataset (N ~ 90 children in the initial wave) includes structural and functional MRI data, resting EEG, salivary assessments of sex steroid hormones, neuropsychological and behavioral assessments, and more.  She also remains very interested in studying social cognitive development "outside the scanner" - such as the impact social identification has on intergroup attitudes in children, as well as the rise in (and implications of) using implicit methods to assess children's affective associations.  Dr. Pfeifer has a growing interest in autism research, particularly in the neural bases of their developing self-evaluations, as well as self-conscious emotion processing and regulation.  She and her graduate students actively collaborate with Drs. Berkman, Fisher, Moses, and Dishion.

Selected Publications:

Pfeifer, J.H., Masten, C.L., Borofsky, L.A., Dapretto, M., Fuligni, A.J., & Lieberman, M.D. (2009).  Neural correlates of direct and reflected self-appraisals in adolescents and adults: When social perspective-taking informs self-perception.  Child Development, 80, 1016-1038.

Pfeifer, J.H., Iacoboni, M., Mazziotta, J.C., & Dapretto, M. (2008).  Mirroring others' emotions relates to empathy and social abilities during childhood.  NeuroImage, 39, 2076-2085.

Pfeifer, J. H., Lieberman, M., & Dapretto, M. (2007). "I know you are but what am I?!": Comparing the neural bases of self- and social knowledge retrieval in children and adults. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 1323-1337.

Pfeifer, J. H., Ruble, D. N., Fuligni, A. J., Bachman, M. A., Alvarez, J. M., & Cameron, J. A. (2007). Social identity and intergroup attitudes in immigrant and non-immigrant children. Developmental Psychology 43, 496-507.

Pfeifer, J. H., Brown, C. S., & Juvonen, J. (2007). Fifty years since Brown vs. Board of Education: Lessons learned about the development and reduction of children's prejudice. Social Policy Report 21(2), 3-23.

Dapretto, M., Davies, M.S., Pfeifer, J.H., Scott, A.A., Sigman, M., Bookheimer, S.Y., & Iacoboni, M. (2006).  Understanding emotions in others: Mirror neuron dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders.  Nature Neuroscience, 9, 28-30.