Biography:

      Ruth Ault is Chair of the Department of Psychology. She obtained her B.A. from Pomona College (the Davidson of the west) and her Ph.D. from UCLA. She taught for seven years at the University of Utah before coming to Davidson in 1979. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and won the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award from Davidson College in 1996. Her specialty area is Child Development, but she also teaches General Psychology, Research Methods in Developmental Psychology, a seminar on Gender Identity, and one of the senior capstone courses, Issues in Psychology.
      Dr. Ault's research interests focus on intellectual (cognitive) development, especially among preschoolers and college students. She has studied memory and problem solving techniques used by both age groups and has written a book on the topic: Children's Cognitive Development. As an outgrowth of her seminar on gender identity, she has become interested in exemplifying concepts in human development using all types of literature: baby diaries, science fiction, modern and classical novels, and short stories.
      Dr. Ault served 5 years as an associate editor for the journal Teaching of Psychology. She handled about 50 manuscript submissions a year, evaluating both their conceptual clarity and adherence to APA Publication Style guidelines (just as she does with senior thesis papers and her students' papers in Research Methods). Currently she fills the same role for the Journal of Genetic Psychology [where “genetic” is an historic synonym for “child development,” not a reference to biological gene actions]. In 2006, after 5 years as treasurer of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (Division 2 of the American Psychological Association), she became the director for that division’s Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology. See http://www.apadiv2.org/otrp/index.php. For summer fun, she helps grade the essay portion of Advance Placement Psychology tests taken by high school students.