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Jodi Anne Quas (born January 31, 1969) is an applied developmental psychologist who is known for her work on how maltreatment and abuse affect
memory development The development of memory is a lifelong process that continues through adulthood. Development etymologically refers to a progressive unfolding. Memory development tends to focus on periods of infancy, toddlers, children, and adolescents, yet the d ...
and children's ability to give
eyewitness testimony Eyewitness testimony is the account a bystander or victim gives in the courtroom, describing what that person observed that occurred during the specific incident under investigation. Ideally this recollection of events is detailed; however, this is ...
after experiencing trauma. She holds the position of Professor of Psychological Science and Nursing Science at the
University of California, Irvine School of Social Ecology The School of Social Ecology (SSE) is a school at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) that focuses on social ecology. Students in SSE at UCI undergo a multidisciplinary program that examines real-world social and environmental issues and ...
.


Biography

Quas was born in Chicago, IL. She attended
Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in t ...
, where she received her B.S. degrees in Psychology and Communication in 1992. She continued her education in Developmental Psychology at the
University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...
, where she complete her M.A. in 1994 and her Ph.D. in 1998. Her dissertation titled "Children's memory of experienced and nonexperienced events across repeated interviews" was conducted under the supervision of
Gail Goodman Gail S. Goodman is an American psychologist, known as one of the first in her field to study children's roles in the legal system, specifically children's eyewitness testimony pertaining to the Sixth Amendment. Her awards for her contributions t ...
. After completing a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, Quas joined the faculty of the University of California, Irvine in 2000. Quas is the Editor of several books including ''Memory and Suggestibility in the Forensic Interview'' (with Mitchell Eisen and Gail Goodman) and ''Emotion in Memory and Development: Biological, Cognitive, and Social Considerations'' (with
Robyn Fivush Robyn Fivush is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Emory University, College of Arts and Sciences in Atlanta, GA. She is well known for her research on parent-child narrative (i ...
). She serves on the editorial board of the journals ''
Child Abuse & Neglect ''Child Abuse & Neglect'' is a monthly peer-reviewed interdisciplinary social science journal covering child protection. It was established in 1977 and is the official journal of the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglec ...
'' and ''
Applied Cognitive Psychology ''Applied Cognitive Psychology'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering experimental research in cognitive psychology. It was established in 1987 and is published by John Wiley & Sons. The founding editors-in-chief were Douglas ...
''.


Awards

Quas received the Louise Kidder Early Career Award from the
Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Founded in 1936, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) is a group of 3,000 scientists from psychology and related fields who share a common interest in research on the psychological aspects of important social and policy i ...
in 2002 and the Saleem Shah Early Career Award from the
American Psychology–Law Society The American Psychology–Law Society (AP–LS) is an academic society for legal and forensic psychologists, as well as general psychologists who are interested in the application of psychology to the law. AP–LS serves as Division 41 of the Amer ...
,
American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It has ...
(APA) Division 41 in 2004. In 2008, Quas was awarded the APA Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology and the
Robert L. Fantz Robert Lowell Fantz (1925–1981) was an American developmental psychologist who pioneered several studies into infant perception. In particular, the preferential looking paradigm introduced by Fantz in the 1961 is widely used in cognitive develo ...
Memorial Award for Young Psychologists. In 2017, Quas has selected to receive the Outstanding Community Research Award from the Institute for Clinical and Translational Science at University of California, Irvine in recognition of her contributions to developing "methods of enhancing children's eyewitness memory" and furthering understanding of "the effects of stress and trauma on children's development, and the consequences of legal involvement on child witnesses, victims, and even defendants."


Research

Quas studies the psychological experiences and the memory development of children who have lived through traumatic abuse, including physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, and
neglect In the context of caregiving, neglect is a form of abuse where the perpetrator, who is responsible for caring for someone who is unable to care for themselves, fails to do so. It can be a result of carelessness, indifference, or unwillingness and ...
. Quas and her collaborators aim to gain understanding of the exact events that occurred during an abuse scenario involving a child, so the abusers can face proper legal ramifications. In a series of studies involving diverse cohorts of 4- to 14-year-old children, Quas and her colleagues measured brain activity while children performed challenging tasks designed to activate stress reactions in the brain. The researchers identified six distinct patterns of stress reactivity to the scenarios, and considered how such variation may help to explain how traumatic experiences can lead to adverse mental effects and alter memory development. Quas continued to research cases of sexual abuse, but the focus shifted from children to adolescents. The main type of cases involving adolescents that Quas studied were those that involved
human trafficking Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extr ...
victims. Quas aims to get a better understanding of a victim's experience by studying the responses they give to investigators. With a better understanding of their responses, possible connections can be made in how a victim responds to certain questions. Quas's research has been supported by the
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
.


Representative publications

* Boyce, W. T., Quas, J., Alkon, A., Smider, N. A., Essex, M. J., & Kupfer, D. J. (2001). Autonomic reactivity and psychopathology in middle childhood. ''The British Journal of Psychiatry'', ''179''(2), 144–150. * Goodman, G. S., Quas, J. A., & Ogle, C. M. (2010). Child maltreatment and memory. ''Annual Review of Psychology'', ''61'', 325–351. * Quas, J. A., Bauer, A., & Boyce, W. T. (2004). Physiological reactivity, social support, and memory in early childhood. ''Child Development'', ''75''(3), 797-814. * Quas, J. A., Goodman, G. S., Bidrose, S., Pipe, M. E., Craw, S., & Ablin, D. S. (1999). Emotion and memory: Children's long-term remembering, forgetting, and suggestibility. ''Journal of Experimental Child Psychology'', ''72''(4), 235–270. * Quas, J. A., Goodman, G. S., Ghetti, S., Alexander, K. W., Edelstein, R., Redlich, A. D., ... & Haugaard, J. J. (2005). Childhood sexual assault victims: Long-term outcomes after testifying in criminal court. ''Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 70''(2), i-139. * Quas, J. A., Goodman, G. S., & Jones, D. P. (2003). Predictors of attributions of self‐blame and internalizing behavior problems in sexually abused children. ''Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry'', ''44''(5), 723–736.


References


External links


Faculty profile
at
UC Irvine UC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two ** ''University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme * Universal Century, one of the t ...
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Quas, Jodi American women psychologists 21st-century American psychologists American women academics 21st-century American women Living people Developmental psychologists 1969 births Arizona State University alumni University of California, Davis alumni University of California, Irvine faculty 20th-century American psychologists