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Marian Sigman

Professor

Marian Sigman UCLA Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center
University of California, Los Angeles
Mail Code 175919
NPI, Rm 68-237C
Los Angeles, CA 90024
310-825-0180 (tel)
[email protected]


Biography/Curriculum Vitae:

Research Interests:
Effects of debilitating and high-risk conditions on childrens development

Narrative of Current Research Efforts:
Sigman Marian Sigman's principal research aim is to determine the effects of debilitating and high-risk conditions on children's development, with the goal of ameliorating or preventing dysfunction. Sigman is currently involved in studies of four groups:
  1. children with autism and mental retardation
  2. children and adolescents at risks of anxiety disorders
  3. adolescents at risk of AIDS
  4. malnourished children growing up in rural Kenya.
Sigman's research program has been designated a Collaborative Program of Excellence in Autism. The overall purpose of Sigman's research is to determine the biological and environmental contributors to social communicative deficits and skills in autism and includes the following four studies:
  • A longitudinal follow-up of a group of autistic adolescents and young adults who were assessed at ages 2-6 years and in the mid-school years
  • an experiment aimed at changing the social communicative skills of very young children with autism
  • a genetic study of individuals at risk of autism and associated with social communicative deficits because of inverted duplication of a portion of chromosome 15; and
  • a comparison of the neural networks activated in processes involved in communication, including recognition and response to faces, emotions, and prosody, using fMRI with adolescents and young adults with autism and non-autistic language impairment.
In collaboration with Charlotte Neumann of the School of Public Health, Sigman has also started a research project investigating the differential effects of animal products and caloric intake in a school breakfast program involving about 500 first-graders in rural Kenya.

Major Honors and Awards:


Representative Publications:

Moore PS, Whaley SE and Sigman M (2004) Interactions between mothers and children: impacts of maternal and child anxiety. J Abnorm Psychol, 113:471-6.

Sigman M, Dissanayake C, Corona R and Espinosa M (2003) Social and cardiac responses of young children with autism. Autism, 7:205-16.

Wood JJ, McLeod BD, Sigman M, Hwang WC and Chu BC (2003) Parenting and childhood anxiety: theory, empirical findings, and future directions. J Child Psychol Psychiatry, 44:134-51.

Siller M and Sigman M (2002) The behaviors of parents of children with autism predict the subsequent development of their children's communication. J Autism Dev Disord, 32:77-89.

Whaley SE, Sigman M, Neumann C, Bwibo N, Guthrie D, Weiss RE, Alber S and Murphy SP (2003) The impact of dietary intervention on the cognitive development of Kenyan school children. J Nutr, 133:3965S-3971S.

 



Created 7/27/2006 by Evette Mezger
Last modified 8/28/2006 by Dorwin Birt