As a professor, Diane E. Papalia has taught thousands of undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her bachelor’s degree, majoring in psychology, from Vassar College and both her master’s degree in child development and family relations and her Ph.D. in life-span developmental psychology from West Virginia University. She has published numerous articles in such professional journals as Human Development, International Journal of Aging and Human Development, Sex Roles, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology and Journal of Gerontology. Most of these papers have dealt with her major research focus, cognitive development from childhood through old age.

Gabriela Alicia Martorell was born in Seattle, Washington, but moved as a toddler to Guatemala. At eight, she returned to the United States and lived in Northern California until leaving for her undergraduate training at the University of California, Davis. After obtaining her B.S. in Psychology, she earned her Ph.D. in Developmental and Evolutionary Psychology with an interdisciplinary emphasis in Human Development from the University of California, Santa Barbara.