Peter J. Marshall, Ph.D.

 

Email:  peter.marshall@temple.edu
Phone: (215) 204-5744

Interests: Peter J. Marshall received his B.A and Ph.D from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He is a developmental psychologist whose primary research focus is the effect of early experience on brain development. His program of research at Temple involves studying early experience processes in two different contexts.  A consistent focus in his work is the use of electrophysiological measures (especially EEG and ERP) to index relations between the developing nervous system and behavior in infants and children.

The first context concerns certain theoretical frameworks which propose that an observed action activates the same motor processes or motor schemas in the observer's brain that would be activated if he or she was performing or planning the same action.  Support for this “common coding” of perception and action comes from several lines of research, including the identification of an area of premotor cortex in macaques which shows similar patterns of activation during action execution and action observation.  In humans, the activation of premotor or motor cortex during action observation has also been documented using various neurophysiological techniques, including functional neuroimaging and EEG.  Engagement of the human motor system by action observation has also been suggested by various behavioral studies, further suggesting the existence of a human “mirror system” which subserves the overlap between action observation and action execution.  Questions concerning the ontogeny of the mirror system are of much current interest to developmental scientists – it is these questions that Dr. Marshall is particularly interested in.  Key questions include how and when the engagement of the motor system during action observation might emerge, how this engagement relates to the development of imitative abilities, and how early self-experience with actions  as well as infant’s knowledge of their own bodies in space influence the development of the mirror system.

The second context of Dr. Marshall's research program examines the effect of early intervention on brain development for children who have been subject to neglect. This aspect is manifested in his involvement in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, which is an examination of a foster care intervention for previously institutionalized children in Bucharest, Romania. This project is part of the MacArthur Network on Early Experience and Brain Development, and has many important implications for the study and practice of early intervention, especially issues of timing of interventions in relation to early brain and behavioral development.  Some of the findings from this study were published in Science in December 2007.

Dr. Marshall's website with links for classes is available at http://astro.temple.edu/~pjmarsh/teaching.htm