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Cognitive Development in Context

Understanding the neural and behavioral correlates of cognition and learning.

We study how cognitive control, attention, self-regulation, and metacognition develop across childhood and adolescence, using behavioral and neuroscientific methods to understand the processes that support learning.

Classroom Experiences and Learning

How everyday classroom experiences shape students' cognition, engagement, and learning.

We examine how instructional practices, social interactions, and learning activities influence students' cognitive and behavioral regulation, using neuroscience and multimodal methods to study these processes in real-world classrooms.

The Physical Learning Environment

How the physical environments of schools shape opportunities for learning.

We investigate how classroom acoustics, noise, and other environmental conditions interact with students' cognitive processes, shaping attention, language processing, and learning across educational contexts.

Educator Knowledge and Practice

How educators' understanding of development informs teaching and learning.

We study educators' knowledge, beliefs, and interpretations of students' cognitive development and behavior, examining how these perspectives shape instructional decisions and opportunities to support diverse learners.

What are the brain and behavioral changes in the cognitive skills that support learning?

Understanding how cognition develops is an essential first step toward school-based strategies that support it. We study the behavioral and neural correlates of cognitive control, which plays an important role in children's ability to regulate both cognition and emotion. In addition to traditional measures of executive function, such as lab tasks and parent or teacher report, since 2010 we have worked to bring EEG data collection into schools, providing a non-invasive, child-friendly window into these cognitive processes. In addition to studying development, we also explore what we can learn by considering related processes, including emotion, motivation, persistence, anxiety, and stress.

How does experience in school shape the development of cognition?

My interest in instructional practices that support cognitive development began with teacher language. Through experimental and longitudinal studies, we have shown that instruction rich in references to cognitive processes, including metacognition, is linked to gains in children's strategic memory, mathematics, and study skills.

To understand how specific classroom experiences change brain and behavior for individual students, we began collecting EEG/ERP data in classrooms in 2017. Since then, in studies with elementary schoolers to college students, we have found that neural measures of attention vary with instructional activity, and sometimes diverge from the behaviors we usually associate with attention in students. Because attention and cognitive control are multidimensional and rarely captured by a single measure, more recently we have been integrating neural, physiological, motor, and behavioral data, including LIDAR and millimeter-wave sensing, to study student attention and self-regulation. In doing so, our goal is to move beyond identifying which learning environments support students toward understanding how and why they work.

How do classroom acoustics support or hinder cognitive development?

The physical structure of a classroom is part of every student's school experience. Two new foundation-funded projects use new measures of speech intelligibility and acoustics to examine how classroom acoustics affects cognitive control and language development, among elementary students and among formerly incarcerated youth.

What do educators understand about cognitive development, and how does it shape their practice?

Children's school experiences are shaped by many people: teachers, support staff, school leaders, and policymakers. What began as an effort to inform teacher professional development through the UC|CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning has grown into a sustained line of research on educators' own development. With my graduate students, we are now in the third of a series of qualitative studies on what educators understand about student cognition and how their knowledge and beliefs shape their classroom practice and interactions with students.

Through the UC|CSU Collaborative, we have surveyed pre-service and in-service teachers across California, studied how UC and CSU teacher-education faculty prepare new teachers, and are now examining the efficacy of different types of professional learning.

From student development to educator development

As UC Faculty Director of the UC|CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning, I work with scholars across the UC and CSU systems to grow the knowledge and skills of all those who shape the experiences of diverse learners, from pre-service teachers to policymakers. We draw on research—including our own—to inform Arraya Learning, the Collaborative's statewide online platform. Launched in 2025, it now serves more than 12,000 educators, leaders, and policymakers.

Jennie K. Grammer, PhD

I am a developmental psychologist interested in how school experiences shape children's cognitive development, and in how research can help educators create learning environments that support the diverse needs of children and youth.

I received my PhD in Developmental Psychology from UNC Chapel Hill and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Michigan and in the Department of Pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. I joined UCLA in 2014, and from 2022 to 2023 served as the Stern Bicentennial Associate Professor in Education and Neuroscience at the University of Virginia. I co-lead the UC|CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning as UC Faculty Director and serve as President of the International Mind, Brain, and Education Society.

Zoe studies how teachers understand children's attention and how attention varies across instructional contexts, using behavioral coding and EEG. 2026–27 UCLA Dissertation Year Award.

Kyle studies what teachers and teacher-education faculty know about executive functions, and how college students with ADHD are supported through academic accommodations.

Chang, F. Y., Mao, X. Z.*, Khalil, M., Dillon, A., Rapport, M. D., Loo, S. K., Grammer, J. K., & Lenartowicz, A. (in press). Mechanisms and measurement of attention in laboratory tasks versus naturalistic learning contexts. Scientific Reports.

Richardson, D., Peters, A., Waters, N., Hampton Wray, A., Grammer, J. K., & Isbell, E. (2026). Characterizing Neural Indices of Cognitive Control in Young Children: A School-based ERP Study with Naturalistic Stimuli. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2026.101817

Peters, A., Waters, N., Grammer, J. K., & Isbell, E. (2026). Longitudinal Associations between Cognitive Control Consistency and Academic Skills across Kindergarten and First Grade. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2026.106544

Mao, X. Z.* & Grammer, J. K. (2026). “Paying Attention Gets Twice the Result with Half the Effort”: Teachers’ Understanding of Children’s Attention in Chinese Early Childhood Classrooms. Applied Developmental Science. doi: 10.1080/10888691.2026.2632895

Coffman, J. L., Westover, A. E., Grammer, J. K., McNeish, D. M., & Ornstein, P. A. (2025). Deliberate Memory Strategy Development: The Interplay of Children’s Self-Regulated Learning Abilities and Teachers’ Cognitive Processing Language. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. doi: 10.1037/mac0000241

Cameron, C., McClelland, M., Grammer, J. K., & Morrison, F. J. (2024). Self-regulation and academic achievement. In M. A. Bell (Ed.), Child development at the intersection of emotion and cognition (2nd ed., pp. 213–234). APA. doi: 10.1037/0000406-011

Grammer, J. K. & Ahmed, S. F. (2023). Informing the Development of School-Based Strategies to Promote Children's Executive Function Skills: Considerations, Challenges, and Future Directions. Mind, Brain, and Education. doi: 10.1111/mbe.12368

Isbell, E. & Grammer, J. K. (2022). ERP data quality in young children: Standardized measurement error of the ERN and Pe. Developmental Psychobiology, 64(4), e22245. doi: 10.1002/dev.22245

Xu, K.*, Torres, R.*, Torgrimson, S. J.*, Lenartowicz, A., & Grammer, J. K. (2022). EEG Data Quality in Real-World Settings: Examining Neural Correlates of Attention in School-Aged Children. Mind, Brain, and Education. doi: 10.1111/mbe.12314

Rapp, A. M.*, Tan, P. Z., Grammer, J. K., Gehring, W. J., Miller, G. A., & Chavira, D. A. (2022). Cultural group differences in the association of neural sensitivity to social feedback and social anxiety among diverse adolescents. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 143, 400–408. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.09.036

Janssen, T., Grammer, J. K., Vatakis, A., Bulgarelli, C., Zion-Golumbic, E., Vassena, E., Davidesco, I., Jasińska, K. K., Bleichner, M. G., Siugzdaite, R., Dikker, S., & van Atteveldt, N. (2021). Opportunities and limitations of using portable brain technology in educational neuroscience. Mind, Brain, and Education, 15(4), 354–370. doi: 10.1111/mbe.12302

Ellis, A., Ahmed, S. F., Zeytinoglu, S., Isbell, E., Calkins, S. D., Leerkes, E. M., Grammer, J. K., Gehring, W. J., Morrison, F. J., & Davis-Kean, P. E. (2021). Reciprocal associations between executive function and academic achievement: A conceptual replication of Schmitt et al. 2017. Journal of Numerical Cognition, 7(3), 453–472. doi: 10.5964/jnc.7047

Grammer, J. K., Xu, K.*, & Lenartowicz, A. (2021). Effects of context on the neural correlates of attention in a college classroom. npj Science of Learning, 6, 15. doi: 10.1038/s41539-021-00094-8

Ahmed, S. F., Grammer, J. K., & Morrison, F. (2021). The development and validation of classroom-based executive function assessments in school-aged children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 208. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105131

Torgrimson, S. J.*, Tan, P. Z., & Grammer, J. K. (2021). Associations among response inhibition, motivational beliefs, and task persistence in early elementary school. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 208. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105141

Rapp, A.*, Grammer, J. K., Tan, P. Z., Gehring, W., Miller, G. A., & Chavira, D. (2021). Collectivism is associated with enhanced neural response to errors occurring in a socially-salient context among diverse adolescents. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 1150–1159. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsab065

Rapp, A. M.*, Tan, P. Z., Grammer, J. K., Gehring, W. J., Miller, G. A., & Chavira, D. A. (2021). Cultural values influence relations between parent emotion socialization and adolescents’ neural responses to peer rejection. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology. doi: 10.1007/s10802-020-00764-y

Morrison, F. J., Kim, M. H., Connor, C. M., & Grammer, J. K. (2019). The causal impact of schooling on children’s development: Lessons for developmental science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28(5), 441–449. doi: 10.1177/0963721419855661

Coffman, J. L., Grammer, J. K., Hudson, K. N., Thomas, T. E., Villwock, D., & Ornstein, P. A. (2019). Relating children’s early elementary classroom experiences to later skilled remembering and study skills. Journal of Cognition and Development, 20(2), 203–221. doi: 10.1080/15248372.2018.1470976

Grammer, J. K., Gehring, W. J., & Morrison, F. J. (2018). Associations between developmental changes in error‐related brain activity and executive functions in early childhood. Psychophysiology, 55(3). doi: 10.1111/psyp.13040

Kim, S. H., Grammer, J. K., Benrey, N., Morrison, F. J., & Lord, C. (2017). Stimulus processing and error monitoring in more-able kindergarteners with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A short review and a preliminary ERP study. European Journal of Neuroscience, 47, 556–567. doi: 10.1111/ejn.13580

Kim, M. H., Marulis, L. M., Grammer, J. K., Morrison, F. J., & Gehring, W. J. (2017). Young children’s motivational beliefs and achievement-related emotions are associated with electrophysiological measures of error monitoring processes. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 155, 32–47. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.10.010

Kim, M. H., Grammer, J. K., Marulis, L. M., Carrasco, M., Morrison, F. J., & Gehring, W. J. (2016). Early math and reading achievement are associated with the error positivity. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 18–26. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2016.09.002

Grammer, J. K., Coffman, J. L., Sydney, P. G., & Ornstein, P. A. (2016). Linking teacher instruction and student achievement in mathematics: The role of teacher language. Journal of Cognition and Development, 17, 468–485. doi: 10.1080/15248372.2015.1068777

Morrison, F. J. & Grammer, J. K. (2016). Conceptual clutter and measurement mayhem: A proposal for a cross disciplinary approach to conceptualizing and measuring executive function. In J. A. Griffin, L. S. Freund, & P. McArdle (Eds.), Executive function in preschool age children: Integrating measurement, neurodevelopment and translational research (pp. 327–348). APA.

Grammer, J. K., Carrasco, M., Gehring, W. J. & Morrison, F. J. (2014). Age-related differences in error processing in young children. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 9, 93–105. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2014.02.001