3C Institute and Zoo U Highlighted by the Institute of Emerging Issues

3C Institute and Zoo U are featured in the Institute of Emerging Issues’ December newsletter. The Institute of Emerging Issues is a public policy organization that brings people together around complex issues such as education and health to ensure North Carolina’s future competitiveness.

The newsletter focuses on social-emotional learning (SEL), including defining social-emotional health and linking SEL with 21st-century skills and STEM careers. 3C Institute is noted as offering a new approach to SEL through Zoo U—an engaging, evidence-based online game that assesses and teaches social skills. Of 3C Institute and Zoo U, the newsletter says:

Engaged in a wide range of efforts to promote positive social, emotional, and mental health, 3C Institute in Cary, North Carolina, has developed a new approach to bridging the research-practice gap.  Founded in 2001 by Dr. Melissa DeRosier, 3C’s focus is on improving the social-emotional health of children and families, primarily through the delivery of social skills interventions in schools and clinics. 3C Institute integrates social development research into game-based platforms to create effective and engaging intelligent systems for assessment and learning.

The institute’s Zoo U, for example, is an interactive, evidence-based online game designed to assess and enhance elementary students’ social skills, while simultaneously tracking their progress toward specific goals. The game focuses on six core social skills: impulse control, empathy, initiation, communication, cooperation, and emotion regulation.  In Zoo U, students navigate social situations in an engaging virtual school for zookeepers-in-training.

Studies show that programs enhancing social-emotional health, such as those developed at 3C Institute, result in significant benefits for students, schools, and society, including:

  • Safer schools with fewer incidents of bullying, discipline problems, and violence;
  • Lower truancy rates and increased student engagement;
  • Greater ability to persist in secondary and postsecondary education; and
  • Higher test scores and grades.

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    DEB CHILDRESS, PHD

    Chief of Research and Learning Content

    BIOGRAPHY

    Dr. Childress obtained her PhD in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to 3C Institute, she served as a research associate and a postdoctoral fellow in the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill working on a longitudinal imaging study aimed at identifying the early markers of autism through behavioral and imaging methodologies. She has 19 years of autism research experience, during which she has examined the behavioral, personality, and cognitive characteristics of individuals with autism and their family members. Dr. Childress also has experience developing behavioral and parent report measurement tools, coordinating multi-site research studies, and collecting data from children and families. She has taught courses and seminars in general child development, autism, and cognitive development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    Expertise

    • autism
    • early development
    • behavioral measurement
    • integrating behavioral and biological measurement

    Education

    • Postdoctoral fellowship, Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (Institutional NRSA-NICHD), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    • PhD, developmental psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    • BS, psychology (minor in sociology), University of Iowa

    Selected Publications

    • Elison, J. T., Wolff, J. J., Heimer, D. C., Paterson, S. J., Gu, H., Hazlett, H. C., Styner, M, Gerig, G., & Piven, J. (in press). Frontolimbic neural circuitry at 6 months predicts individual differences in joint attention at 9 months. Developmental Science.
    • Wassink, T. H., Vieland, V. J., Sheffield, V. C., Bartlett, C. W., Goedken, R., Childress, D. & Piven, J. (2008). Posterior probability of linkage analysis of autism dataset identifies linkage to chromosome 16. Psychiatric Genetics,18(2),85-91.
    • Losh, M., Childress, D., Lam K. & Piven, J. (2008). Defining key features of the broad autism phenotype: A comparison across parents of multiple- and single-incidence autism families. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 147B(4):424-33.
    • Wassink, T. H., Piven, J., Vieland, V. J., Jenkins, L., Frantz R., Bartlett, C. W., Goedken, R., … Sheffield, V.C. (2005). Evaluation of the chromosome 2q37.3 gene CENTG2 as an autism susceptibility gene. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 136, 36-44.
    • Barrett, S., Beck, J., Bernier, R., Bisson, E., Braun, T., Casavant, T., Childress, D., … Vieland, V. (1999). An autosomal genomic screen for autism. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 88, 609-615. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1096-8628(19991215)88:63.0.CO;2-L
    • Piven, J., Palmer, P., Landa, R., Santangelo, S., Jacobi, D. & Childress, D. (1997). Personality and language characteristics in parents from multiple-incidence autism families. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 74, 398-411.
    • Piven, J., Palmer, P., Jacobi, D., Childress, D. & Arndt, S. (1997). Broader autism phenotype: Evidence from a family history study of multiple-incidence autism families. American Journal of Psychiatry, 154, 185-190.