Dr. Lynn Davison

As an associate faculty here at SMC, I have had the pleasure of teaching Human Lifespan Development as well as Child Development and Introductory Psychology for more than twenty years. I also teach a course in Child Development for UCLA
Extension.

Originally from NYC, I have spent many years working in the Santa Monica community, even prior to teaching at SMC. I received my BA in Psychology from CSUN and MA/Ph.D. degrees in Cognitive Psychology from Claremont Graduate University. My past experience as a child caregiver in a residential treatment
setting along with working one-on-one with children at varying levels of the autism spectrum greatly expanded my interest in how early childhood experience affects development of mental processes like attention and perception.

Epigenetics shows that environmental factors affect how genes may be expressed, and as our environment changes, so do the influences that shape development.

Having a strong musical background, I also studied selective attention using musical counterpoint as a stimulus to better understand how specific aspects of composition and their interactions relate to analytical and holistic modes of
perception (which highlight differences between left and right hemispheric functioning). My Master’s thesis, entitled “Selective Attention In Two-part Counterpoint” (Davison & Banks) was published in Music Perception, 2003 (21)