Brad E. Sheese, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Illinois Wesleyan University

Google Scholar Profile, Curriculum Vitae, Selected Works

Contact: bsheese@iwu.edu

Applied Developmental Research, Community Work, & Advocacy

I am an advocate of using basic research in Developmental Psychology and Developmental Neuroscience to inform educational practices at all levels (K-College). I promote and support project-based educational practices both at my University and in the local community. By pairing with local non-profit organizations that serve children, I have also been working to get my undergraduates out of the classroom and into the community. Working with community partners enriches undergraduates' understanding child development and helps provide context for the research we study in the classroom.

I also advocate for teaching undergraduates the use of Data Science tools to improve how they document and analyze data from their lab work. Undergraduates with an interest in any form of science can benefit from learning the basics of computer programming and how to create reproducible analyses. I'm also very excited about how Juypter Notebooks can be used to help students learn to do science better.

Teaching

More detailed information about my courses can be found here. Courses in my current teaching rotation include:

Computer and Data Science

• Introduction to Computer and Data Sciences (CS/DS 125)
• Applied Data Analysis (CS/DS/PSYC 377)
• Directed Study: Data Science Capstone (DS 395)*

Developmental Psychology

• Child Development (PSYC 252)
• Advanced Child Development (PSYC 352)
• Special Topics: Prenatal Development (PSYC 369)

Other Courses in Psychology

• General Psychology (PSYC 100)
• History and Systems of Psychology (PSYC 330)
• Special Topics: Psychological and Educational Applications of Virtual Reality (PSYC 369)
• Directed Study: Research on Applications of Virtual Reality (PSYC 395)*

* denotes courses taught on an as-needed basis. If you have an interest in taking a specific course, but are uncertain when it might be offered, please contact me.

Areas of Research

Overview

One major area of my research examines the development of attention and self-regulation in infancy and early childhood. Much of my published empirical work has examined how variations in genes related to dopamine signaling and parenting quality are linked to the development of different forms of attention and to temperament. My research has also examined attention and self-regulation as predictors of adjustment, academic performance, and pro- and anti-social behavior in children and young adults.

Another major areas of my research has been work on adapting methods developed for assessing different aspects of attention with adults for use with infants. In particular, I have spent considerable time in the lab trying to develop better methods to use looking behavior in infancy to assess the development of executive attention.

Combining my research and teaching interests, I have also been working on developing methods to facilitate undergraduate research using Zebrafish as a model organism.

More detail about some of these projects is provided below. In the end-products listed below * denotes undergraduate co-authors or mentored undergraduates.

Automated Behavioral Experiments with Zebrafish

I have had a long-standing interest in solving the problem of how we can provide undergraduates the opportunity to propose and conduct their own high-quality behavioral research at a small liberal arts school. Historically, the Psychology Department at Illinois Wesleyan University has had a commitment to providing students with hands-on laboratory experiences. I've been working to expand these experiences by developing systems that allow individual undergraduate students to conduct high-quality, low-cost research with sufficiently large samples to to reliably detect moderate to small effects. I have selected Zebrafish as a model organism since they are commonly used in neuroscience and psychopharmacological research and they are inexpensive to acquire and maintain in large numbers in the lab.

The main product of this work, developed in collaboration with my colleague Mark Liffiton, has been ATLeS, a low-cost open-source research system that (nearly) completely automates observational studies and studies of learning and conditioning with adult Zebrafish. We began work in March 2014 and completed testing of our basic system in May of 2018. Our system offers real-time tracking so it can dynamically respond to fish behavior. Our system also offers automated data visualization and statistical analyses. We have designed the system to be inexpensive (less than $100 per tracking box), modular (as many tracking boxes can be added to the system as your lab space allows), and accessible to anyone (hardware can be built with off the shelf components. Software is free for anyone to use or modify). Undergraduates have run a number of pilot studies with the system as we have been working toward finalizing the system.

ATLeS allows undergraduates to run high-quality, large sample size studies of behavior in a very short-time frame. The speed of the system allows undergraduates to conduct research iteratively. We can complete studies (data collection and data analysis) with sample sizes three times as large at what is typically seen in the literature within two weeks. This allows undergraduates to conduct multiple studies per semester during which they can consider their findings and modify their methods. It allows us to detect and correct methodological issues very quickly. ATLeS massively improves the behavioral research feedback loop by shrinking months of work down to days.

Slides from a seminar describing the genesis of the project are available here. More information about the development of ATLeS is available here. If you want to make your own ATLeS please see our github repository.

A few representative end-products from ATLeS and other Zebrafish projects:

• Sheese, B. E., & Liffiton, M. (2017, September). ATLES: A high-throughput open source system for behavioral experiments with Zebrafish. Invited seminar for the School of Biological Sciences at Illinois State University, Normal, IL.
• Loyet*, C., Liffiton, M. & Sheese, B. E. (2016, May). Zebrafish response to contingent light stimuli during 30 and 60 minute training sessions. Poster presented at the annual conference of the Association for Psychological Science, Chicago, IL.
• Henrikson*, C. (2015). The impact of dexamethasone on behavioral development in larval Zebrafish (Danio rerio). Undergraduate honors thesis.
• Sheese, B. E., & Deharak, B. (2014, August). Inexpensive high-throughput computer-aided tracking of Zebrafish in the novel tank paradigm. Poster presentation at the annual conference of the American Psychological Association. Washington, DC.

Theoretical Articles and Literature Reviews

I have co-authored several theoretical/review articles with Michael Posner and Mary Rothbart from the University of Oregon. These publications cover a range of topics but focus on connecting the development of attention and self-regulation to brain development and advocating for a conceptualization of temperament that revolves around variations in cognitive and affective regulatory mechanisms.

A few representative end products:

• Rothbart, M. K., Sheese, B. E., & Posner, M. I. (2015). Temperament and emotion-regulation. In J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion-regulation, 2nd edition (pp. 305-320). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
• Posner, M. I., Rothbart, M. K., Sheese, B. E., & Voelker, P. (2014). Developing attention: Behavioral and brain mechanisms. Advances in Neuroscience, 405094. doi:10.1155/2014/405094
• Posner, M. I., Rothbart, M. K., Sheese, B. E., & Voelker, P. (2012). Control networks and neuromodulators of early development. Developmental Psychology, 48, 827-835. doi:10.1037/a0025530
• Rothbart, M. K., Sheese, B. E., & Conradt, E. D. (2009). Childhood temperament. In P. J. Corr & G. Matthews (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of personality psychology (pp. 177-190). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Other Work: Pro-Social Behavior, Poverty in Argentina

I have collaborated with Sebastian Lipina from the Unidad de Neurobiología Aplicada, Centro de Educación Médica e Investigaciones Clínicas Norberto Quirno (CEMIC), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas CONICET on publications concerning how early exposure to poverty affects the development of cognition and how interventions can be designed to improve cognitive development. Representative end products:

• Prats, L., Segretin, M. S., Frachia, C., Kamienkowski, J., Pietto, M., Hermida, J., Giovannetti, F., Mancini, N., Gravano, A., Sheese, B. E., & Lipina, S. (2017). Asociaciones entre factores individuales y contextuales con el desempeño cognitivo en preescolares de hogares con Necesidades Básicas Insatisfechas (NBI) - Associations between individual and contextual factors with cognitive performance in preschoolers from Unsatisfied Basic Need (UBN) homes. Revista Cuadernos de Neuropsicología - Panamerican Journal of Neuropsychology, 11, 42-77. doi:10.774/CNPS/11.2.201
• Sheese, B. E., & Lipina, S. (2011). Funciones ejecutivas: Consideraciones sobre su evaluacion y el diseno de intervenciones orientadas a optimizarlas. (Executive function assessment and intervention with young children: Some practical considerations and commentary). In S. Lipina & M. Sigman (Eds.) La pizarra de Babel: Puentes entre neurociencia, psicologia y educacion (pp. 229-242). Buenos Ares, Argentina: Libros del Zorzal.

Early in my career, I worked extensively with William Graziano at Purdue University to study pro-social behavior, empathy, and self-regulation. Representative end products:

• Graziano, W. G., Bruce, J., Sheese, B. E., & Tobin, R. M. (2007). Attraction, personality, and prejudice: Liking none of the people most of the time. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 565-582. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.93.4.565
• Graziano, W. G., Habashi, M., Sheese, B. E., & Tobin, R. M. (2007). Agreeableness, empathy, and helping: A person X situation perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 583-599. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.93.4.583
• Sheese, B. E., & Graziano, W. G. (2005). Deciding to defect: The effects of video game violence on cooperative behavior. Psychological Science, 16, 354-357. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01539.x