The Iowa Center for Developmental and Learning Sciences

ICDLS Vision & Mission

The Iowa Center for Developmental and Learning Sciences (ICDLS) brings together researchers who seek to understand processes that underlie development and learning from neurons to neighborhoods, acknowledging that the brain, mind, body, physical environment, social relationships, and large-scale social systems are all intertwined.

Our faculty embrace the complexity of behavior and the challenges inherent in understanding theprocesses that underlie the emergence of behavior. This enterprise is motivated by a desire to understand the processes that modulate and shape development and learning--whether adaptive or maladaptive. Such understanding is central to the development of effective clinical interventions.

This process-oriented view has led us to pursue research that cuts across the domains of perception, language, cognition, action, social and cultural processes, and basic biological mechanisms. Moreover, we seek to foster cross-disciplinary, behaviorally grounded research that offers understanding at multiple levels of analysis. Thus, our faculty come from different disciplines and use diverse methodologies including neurophysiology, behavioral techniques, comparative approaches, computational modeling, movement analysis, and the study of special populations. Although diverse and cross-disciplinary, all Center faculty maintain a strong commitment to the use of sound experimental methods and a rigorous approach to behavioral observation, analysis, and description.

The unique ICDLS Vision underlies our mission:

To encourage dialogue and research collaborations that support our interdisciplinary focus and further our understanding of the processes that underlie development and learning;
To engage in public outreach activities that communicate our vision of DLS to parents, practitioners, and policy makers, bringing insights from the laboratory to society at large;
To train students and post-doctoral fellows in a broad array of theories and methodologies centered on fundamental questions of process.