Ji Son
PsychologyOffice: King Hall, C3061
Office Phone: 323-343-2261
E-mail: json2@calstatela.edu
Research Website: The Learning Lab
Teaching Website: Course Homepages
INTRODUCTION
I am an assistant professor at CSULA and enjoy teaching statistics and cognitive psychology. I am particularly interested in helping students gain skills and perspectives that will continue on with them beyond their time at CSULA.
TEACHING INTERESTS
I teach courses in research methodology, statistics, developmental psychology and cognitive development. My classes are designed to get students interested in pursuing research, practiced in critical thinking, engaged in theoretical debate, and intent on real-world application. In an increasingly information-rich world, students need to understand how to pick out, attend to, and integrate relevant information. This need is the focus of my teaching philosophy as well as my research.
RESEARCH
I am interested in the development of abstract, intelligent, and flexible thinking – the kind of thinking that helps us tackle new problems and challenges. My research examines how children learn about the world and when they apply their old learning to new problems, a process commonly called generalization. Through a variety of creative games and activities, I test what aspects of the learning experience can lead to generalization. These research studies are done with very young children learning about shapes, colors, and patterns but also with school-age children learning about science and mathematics. (Get more information about this research at the Learning Lab website).
If you are interested in research about Science and Math Education (SaME) in general, you may want to join the SaME group, a consortium of scientists, researchers, scholars, practitioners, and students at CalStateLA with the common goal of improve SaME.
PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS
Find more papers and downloads here.
| Title | Date |
|---|---|
| Son, J.Y., Smith, L.B., Goldstone, R.G., & Leslie, M. (2012). The importance of being interpreted: Grounded words and children's relational reasoning. Frontiers in Developmental Psychology, 3, 45. | 2012 |
| Kuwabara, M., Son, J.Y., & Smith, L.B. (2011). Attention to context: U.S. and Japanese children's emotional judgments. Journal of Cognition and Development, 12, 502-517. | 2011 |
| Son, J.Y., Smith, L.B., & Goldstone, R.L. (2011). Connecting instances to promote children's relational reasoning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 108, 260-277. | 2011 |
| Goldstone, R. L., Son, J. Y, & Byrge, L. (2011). Early perceptual learning. Infancy, 16, 45-51. | 2011 |
| Son, J.Y. (2010). Abstracting the Concrete: How Symbols, Experiences, and Language Act as Forces of Contextualization. Saarbrücken, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing. | 2010 |
| Son, J.Y., Doumas, L.A.A., & Goldstone, R.L. (2010). When Do Words Promote Analogical Transfer? Journal of Problem Solving, 3, 52-92. | 2010 |
| Goldstone, R.L., Landy, D.H., & Son, J.Y. (2010). The education of perception. Topics in Cognitive Science, 2, 265-284. | 2010 |
| Kellman, P.J., Massey, C.M., & Son, J.Y. (2010). Perceptual learning modules in mathematics: Enhancing students' pattern recognition, structure extraction, and fluency. Topics in Cognitive Science, 2, 285-305. | 2010 |
| Son, J.Y., & Goldstone, R.L. (2009). Contextualization in perspective. Cognition and Instruction, 27, 1-39. | 2009 |
| Son, J.Y., & Goldstone, R.L. (2009). Fostering general transfer with specific simulations. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17, 1-42. | 2009 |
| Son, J.Y., Smith, L.B., & Goldstone, R.L. (2008). Simplicity and generalization: Short-cutting abstraction in children’s object categorizations. Cognition, 108, 626-638. | 2008 |
| Goldstone, R.L., & Son, J.Y. (2005). The transfer of scientific principles using concrete and idealized simulations. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 14, 69-114. | 2005 |
| Goldstone, R.L., & Son, J.Y. (2005). Similarity. In K.J. Holyoak & R.G. Morrison (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning (pp. 13-36). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. | 2005 |
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
Post-Doctoral Training, Psychology 2007-2009
- UCLA
Los Angeles, CA
PhD, Cognitive Science and Psychology 2007
- Indiana University
Bloomington, IN
BS, Cognitive Science 2002
- UCLA
Los Angeles, CA
COURSE LISTING
| Course | Course Title | Day & Time | Room | Quarter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSY160 | Psychology of the Developing Person | M W, 8:00-9:40am | KH LH2 | Fall, 2012 |
| PSY304 | Research Methods in Psychology | Lec: M W, 11:40-1:20pm | KH D3082 | Fall, 2012 |
| Lab: M W, 1:30-2:45pm | KH D3086 | |||
| Recitation: M W, 2:50-3:15pm | KH D3086 | |||
| PSY160 | Psychology of the Developing Person | T Th 8:00-9:40am | KH LH2 | Winter, 2013 |
| PSY343 | Child & Adolescent Cognition | T R 1:30-3:10pm | KH C4075 | Spring, 2013 |
| PSY412B | Human Development: Adolescence and Young Adulthood | M W 9:50-11:30am | tba | Spring, 2013 |
| PSY302 | Inferential Statistics in Psychology | Lec: M W, 11:40-1:20pm | KH D3082 | Spring, 2013 |
| Lab: M W, 1:30-2:45pm | KH D3086 |