Written by Gijs Holleman(PhD candidate Utrecht University) Many researchers in psychological science have advocated that more ‘ecologically valid’ experiments are needed to understand behaviour in the ‘real world’. However, a general problem with these claims is that ‘ecological validity’ and the ‘real world’ are often not or ill-defined. In our paper in Frontiers in Psychology,…

On 13 May 2020 eighteen CID postdocs, PhD students and research assistants joined our first digital CIDyoung meeting. The COVID-19 crisis is particularly worrisome and stressful for those employed on temporary contracts, which are often trainees. So when the in-person retreat had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CIDyoung retreat committee (Michelle…

At first glance road safety and neurodevelopment form an unusual pairing, but Michelle Achterberg connects them in four short advisory videos for a Veilig Verkeer Nederland (VNN) campaign ‘Verkeersgedrag van kinderen, de ontwikkelingsfasen‘ Although road safety and (brain) development of children might not seem to be linked, there are (neuro)developmental aspects to a child’s behaviour…

Prof. Catrin Finkenauer will take over the role of CID PI in work package 1 from Prof. Wilma Vollebergh (who recently retired). Catrin is a professor in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences: Youth Studies at Utrecht University, as well as Programme Director for Dynamics of Youth, one of Utrecht University’s four strategic themes. Combining social, clinical, experimental,…

On 12 March 2020 Michelle Achterberg successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled ‘Like me, or else… Nature, nurture and neural mechanisms of social emotion regulation in childhood’ at Leiden University. She received her degree cum laude, a very rare distinction that is only given for outstanding results that have been obtained with a very high…

In the past three months CID welcomed three new Doctors in our midst. Congratulations are in order for: Mara van der Meulen (LU, WP2), The social brain in middle childhood – a neurobiological perspective on individual differences in social competence. The main goal of Mara’s dissertation was to understand individual differences in social competence in middle childhood,…

Read about our NWO gravitation funded Consortium on Individual Development (CID) in our online annual report 2018/2019. CID unites the best in Dutch developmental research: >70 researchers in the social sciences, humanities and (bio)medical sciences working at 7 institutes with data from 6 longitudinal human cohort studies and animal models. By working as a team,…

CID researchers Prof. dr. Dorret Boomsma, dr. Eveline de Zeeuw and dr. Elsje van Bergen were awarded a Hestia NWO grant to appoint Hekmat Alrouh MD to a 2-year research project. He was one of nine refugees who received the Hestia grant. “Hestia –  Impulse for Refugees in Science” is a pilot programme to fund…

One of our PIs, professor Ellen Hamaker (WP4) was awarded a prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council. The two million euro grant supports the consolidation of an independent research group over a period of 5 years. On the Utrecht University website, Ellen explains what she intends to do with the grant. She will…

More than 50 members of our research community met up to hear about each others research and ideas at the halfyearly CID meeting on 14 November 2019. The CIDyoung morning meeting set the tone. During several rounds of table discussions, 28 PhDs and postdocs talked about common research topics from an interdisciplinary perspective. The plenary…