Melody Slavnik-Xu

I am a graduate student in the Department of History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins University. My research interests include the developmental science, history of psychology, history of technology, and modern American history.

My dissertation, “Visualizing the Mind: Psychological Measurement and the Politics of Expertise in the 20th Century,” charts the development, circulation, and applications of eye-tracking devices from the late 19th century through the 20th century, devices that I myself used in my prior career in psychological research. By tracing the methods and tools used to study eye movements, I show how psychologists expanded their discipline beyond the physical confines of the research laboratory. Researchers used eye-trackers to develop normative theories of human emotion, learning, and problem-solving, as well as to affirm pre-existing notions of normal eyes, bodies, and minds. This historical research sheds light on how notions of mechanical objectivity and technologies of quantitative measurement informed the cognitive shift in experimental
psychology and, in turn, were transformed by it. Furthermore, my work highlights the latencies that occur between the development of new scientific theories and changes in everyday scientific practice. Even as psychologists turned to new cognitive theories of the mind, their research models and uses of technology were initially rooted in the material, embodied, and tacit practices of behaviorism.

Prior to studying at Johns Hopkins University, I conducted research on motor development at New York University and spent several years managing a NIH-funded, multi-site developmental science research initiative on infant development.