As we launch into 2026—despite painfully freezing temperatures in NYC and a calendar with overly optimistic back-to-back-to-back meetings—I can’t help but feel an immense sense of warm gratitude for the opportunity to mentor outstanding undergraduates, graduate students, research staff, and postdoctoral scientists on our ever-favorite topic of infant development. I am likewise grateful for the opportunity to continue to learn from and contribute to members in the International Congress of Infant Studies. As I enter my 35th year as Professor at NYU, preceded by 4 years of PhD mentorship under Marc Bornstein (yup, I am very old!), I attended ~20 ICIS conferences, more than any other conference. That’s because ICIS is my favorite society by far. I admire the exquisite balance it offers between cutting-edge scholarship and simply having a good time with a vibrant, energetic, visionary, and absolutely welcoming international community of researchers at all stages of their careers. I can’t wait to add another meeting to my list this July in Panama.

Looking back to the end of 2025, November and December were all ICIS. The two weeks before ‘submission deadline’ our lab was frenzied to say the least (I would venture a guess that this was the case for many of you). It was filled with meetings and collaborations on abstracts around infant object interactions, communication, language, social interactions, temporal features of behavior, the home environment, culture, and even motor development (thanks to my sister lab, led by Karen Adolph). Somehow, we managed to submit who knows how many posters, talks, and symposia (I lost count).

So, what is the point of my writing this blog? Why do I feel compelled to express the deep fulfillment I feel about the work we do, the sharing of our research with others, and learning about the pioneering work of our colleagues (many of whom are also good friends)? Why do I feel compelled to applaud the open sharing that allows everyone in our field to learn and grow from each other in ways that make the whole much more than the sum of its parts? Why do I feel compelled to celebrate the sometimes-half-full glass of infancy research even at times when the half-empty glass appears to be front and center? Because I cannot think of anything more important than seeking to understand how infants learn and develop and the factors that propel their learning. The questions we ask as a field, and our excitement around scientific discovery and the testing of hypotheses, must always be louder than any obstacles or concerns. In truth, our glass is overflowing—with new ideas, new methods of data collection, new technologies, and new analytic approaches that allow us to collectively push science forward.

Of course, I am quite aware of the reality that many mentees and staff in my lab, department, university (and surely universities around the globe) are concerned about the future—the job market, academia, grant funding. Students are further concerned about countless other pressures and hurdles they must overcome—their comprehensive exams, R scripts that won’t run, how much they need to publish to land a postdoc or faculty position, and how to handle the comments of ‘Reviewer 2’ (if you are Reviewer #2, I prefer you don’t let us know).

But then I remind everyone in the lab to take a pause and reflect on how totally cool and exciting their work is. I tell my students and staff that their only job right now, their only concern, should be to grow and be passionate about their research and ultimately to do good (hopefully great) work that advances the science of infancy. Then, when we get together for our weekly lab meeting, the excitement of their work takes on a new life. We get to watch videos—hundreds of hours of videos—of babies and toddlers yelling “NO!” to their moms or dads, crawling and walking from room to room, flitting from object to object as they explore their surroundings and generate feedback from the people around them. We watch videos of cultural practices around the globe, from cradling to cuddling, talking to walking. We observe and quantify the unique physical characteristics of apartments in NYC, Hong Kong, and Seoul South Korea, which contain hundreds of child-designed toys, and we contrast those environments with homes in Tajikistan, which are spread over courtyards and where infants play with boulders and twigs, their cribs, plastic water bottles, and the pots and pans their mothers use to cook. We talk about the next study we will run, the grant that just got funded (yay!), the next grant we are currently writing, and how to design our protocols. We start the process of translating and adapting methods and measures to different languages, thankfully made possible by the multilingual community of committed and eager researchers who populate our lab. We upload our videos, coding manuals, spreadsheets and so on to Databrary.org so that authorized investigators can address new questions that we don’t have the bandwidth or expertise to tackle, thereby capitalizing on the investments of federal agencies, foundations, and families who generously give their time to us. Then, we stop to write our abstracts, about what we saw and what we learned, and we submit our work to ICIS.

We may have been frenzied toward the end of 2025, but what could be more fulfilling than clicking submit to share our science? And now, in the blustery cold of winter, we will sit back to await the news, celebrate the overflowing cup of infancy research, and plan our trip to Panama to attend the greatest international conference in developmental science out there. See you all soon!

About the Author

September 10, 1943—October 23, 2025

Judy S. DeLoache was born on September 10, 1943 in the small town of Holyoke, Colorado where she grew up on a wheat farm. There were only 38 people in her graduating class. But being from a small town did not keep her from having a big life. She received her BA and MA degrees at Georgia State College where she worked with Professor James Pate, an experimentalist and statistics instructor.  At the time, her research subjects were rats, and her first publication was “Hippocampal lesions and spontaneous alternation behavior in the rat,” which appeared in Physiology and Behavior. Jim saw her potential and encouraged her to pursue a PhD, so in 1969, she left Georgia and moved to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, where she began her PhD studying infant memory with Dr. Les Cohen.  After receiving her degree in 1973, she took a position as an Assistant Professor at Florida Atlantic University.  But after only a year, she returned to Illinois, after meeting her husband, Jerry Clore. They were married in 1977, and their son Ben was born in 1978.  She spent several years there on soft money, receiving financial and moral support from Professors Ann Brown and Joe Campione, which enabled her to apply for and receive her first NIH research grant called “Representational Functioning in Young Children.” This grant was continuously funded for the entirety of her career.

In 1981, she became an Assistant Professor in the small Department of Human Development and Family Ecology at the University of Illinois, where she came up through the ranks and eventually served as department chair.  She was then hired by the Psychology Department in 1991, where she taught until 2000, after being awarded an Alumni Distinguished Professorship in 1999. In 2001, she moved to the University of Virginia, where she was the Keenan Professor of Psychology until she retired in 2014.

Judy’s successful career as a developmental scientist can be at least partially attributed to the fact that she was a brilliant observer of human behavior. It was in her early memory work that she used a scale model of a larger room to hide an object to see if children could remember where it was hidden in an identical full-sized room. One thing that struck her was that 2.5-year-olds unexpectedly failed this seemingly easy task. Where some researchers would be distraught and call this a failure, Judy observed something interesting. She went on to use this “scale model task” to explore the developmental shift in children’s ability to use a miniature model as a representation of a larger room. Her initial findings using this task led to her seminal paper in Science entitled “Rapid change in the symbolic functioning of very young children,” (1987), and launched a decades long career on young children’s understanding of symbols.

Her largest contribution to developmental science was her theory of dual representation, which explains how children come to understand that a symbolic object—like a picture, map, or scale model—can be both a real object and a representation of something else at the same time. Her work has made a huge impact on how developmental psychologists have studied how children come to understand that pictures, models, books, maps, digital media, and other symbolic objects stand for real-world things. Her work shed a new light on how representational insight develops and how it supports long-term learning, and has influenced not only theories of cognitive development, but also practical approaches to education and media design for young children. Her seminal “shrinking room study,” which advanced her dual representation theory, was selected for the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)’s list of “Twenty Studies that Fascinated Child Psychology,” in 2003, properly putting her name next to giants in the field like Harry Harlow, Eleanor Gibson, and Jean Piaget.

Judy was also the recipient of numerous national and international awards including the APA William James Fellow Award, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, SRCD Senior Distinguished Contributions Award, and the Distinguished Contribution Award from the International Congress on Infant Studies (ICIS).

Despite being a brilliant and world-renown scientist, Judy was down to earth, kind, and generous with her time. And she was fun. She loved life, she loved people, and she loved her students. She especially loved her husband Jerry, her son Ben and daughter-in-law Laura, and her grandchildren Waverly and Wilder. Of all of her many accomplishments, her family was the one she was most proud of. To me, Judy was a teacher, a mentor, and a friend. She was always the life of the party—the person everyone in the room wanted to talk to. She was one of my favorite people. And if you knew her, I’m certain she was one of yours too.

Vanessa LoBue

So why aren’t we reporting pilots?

Why do we pilot?

Most psychology researchers pilot their studies. Piloting involves testing the method and technical aspects of a study before the main data collection begins. We do this to ensure everything works as expected before inviting participants to the main study. Skipping piloting risks methodological or technical issues emerging after significant progress has already been made.

Depending on the study, different types of piloting might be preferred or prioritized. For example, some focus on testing feasibility by checking whether participants understand and follow the procedures. Others use pilots to develop materials, like refining survey questions or designing a new experimental paradigm, and some to evaluate the effectiveness of a method. Finally, many run technical pilots to ensure software, equipment, and the general setup function correctly.

Why is piloting critical for developmental research?

In developmental science, piloting is especially important. Studying babies and children often requires extensive preliminary work to create age-appropriate paradigms. From designing videos that babies will actually watch to building tasks toddlers can understand and tolerate, learning what works across developmental stages takes time and effort. Perfecting study designs before main data collection is also essential because recruiting families is resource-intensive, and finding volunteers willing to complete surveys or come to the lab, amid other childcare responsibilities, is not easy.

This pretesting produces valuable knowledge that can benefit the broader research community. For example, discovering that a particular set of instructions doesn’t work for 4-year-olds, or that 20 half-minute videos are too long for 10-month-olds (but that 15 videos works well, as long as there are sound effects throughout), can be incredibly helpful for others developing paradigms for the same age groups. Still, insights about what worked (and what didn’t) during piloting rarely makes the public record and often ends up in a “file drawer” of unreported pilots, both in developmental science and psychological research more generally.

Working towards more transparency in piloting

Because piloting provides important insights that can easily get lost if not reported, together with several other psychology researchers, we formed the Pilot Reporting Task Force. The Task Force aims to facilitate change regarding pilot reporting practices (or lack thereof) in psychology.

We first sought to understand how researchers pilot their studies and feel about transparently reporting them. In an international online survey with 135 researchers, we found that the majority piloted their studies; however, the methods of piloting varied, and most disclosed that they rarely reported this information in publications. Despite this, many agreed that basic information about pilot studies should be included in final publications (see the full report here).

Given that researchers largely support pilot study reporting but lack guidance on how to do it, we’re now developing resources, including templates and adaptable guidelines. This is not an easy task, and we hope to encourage broader discussion around transparent piloting practices. For those particularly interested in this topic, we invite you to visit our project page or reach out if you’re curious about joining a project or pitching a new one.

What developmental researchers can gain from pilot reporting

It is no coincidence that we as researchers with a background in studying child development initiated a task force on pilot reporting. The resource-intensive nature of our discipline makes methodological efficiency especially important. Sharing insights about what works across different age groups can help others avoid time-consuming dead ends and wasted resources.

Given how novel our paradigms often are and how much trial-and-error goes into making experiments work with babies and children, the process of method development is likely as valuable as the final result (or at the very least, it provides important context for evaluating the result). Beyond evaluation alone, sharing this kind of information could also accelerate methodological innovation or even foster collaboration. Many researchers frequently discover interesting effects of stimuli or contextual factors during piloting that must be controlled for but cannot be fully explored due to resource constraints. By including more context about these effects in our publications, we could build a more collective knowledge base and generate momentum for collaborative initiatives to investigate them further. Of course, such momentum depends on efforts beyond reporting alone, but none of these additional efforts are possible without that initial transparency.

To kickstart this process, developmental researchers could begin by documenting key decisions made during piloting: For example, why were certain stimuli selected? How were instructions modified for different age groups? What procedural changes were made based on pilot feedback? Even basic documentation of these decisions could provide valuable context for other researchers.

In the interim, an easy first step would be to compile this information in a repository and reference it in methods sections with a simple sentence acknowledging that the study was piloted.

Looking ahead

Currently, there are no general recommendations for reporting pilot studies, and it’s likely that pilots are primarily viewed as part of researchers’ methodological due diligence rather than as essential components of the main argument. Particularly, given that these preliminary studies can be smaller in scale and that publications are often evaluated on their specific findings rather than the thoroughness of methodological development. Without an established reporting culture, pilot transparency isn’t likely to be top of mind. However, whenever we discuss this topic with colleagues, many quickly realize the importance of these preliminary studies and the benefits that can be gained from reporting them.

We also foresee some clear barriers to more transparent piloting, which are also likely to contribute to the lack of reporting culture. In addition to lack of reporting guidelines, journal space constraints might sometimes preclude more detailed descriptions. The iterative nature of piloting also makes summarizing it concisely challenging. Lastly, disagreement over what constitutes piloting (or a legitimate use of it) may make researchers hesitant to discuss their practices for fear of scrutiny.

Nevertheless, we believe that fostering a transparent culture around preliminary research has many opportunities. We hope that the standards and templates we develop can serve as a helpful resource. However, the goal is not to create one uniform standard for piloting (or its reporting) across all research areas, but rather to encourage researchers to uncover the process behind method development and testing. The field has long favored clean and polished research narratives, while overlooking the complex and sometimes messy process behind each study. Pilot study reporting could be a window into a more transparent scientific process in psychology in general, and developmental science in particular.

If you’re interested in reading more about this topic, a comprehensive discussion is available in our preprint (Handley-Miner et al., 2025).

About the Author

Yet, to spend a day watching infants, toddlers and young children, one might think they are quite different creatures when it comes to the world of effort. In fact, the younger members of our species, upon casual observation, appear to be wanton devotees of effort-filled agendas. The 8-month-old infant repeatedly trying to crawl forward but moving backward instead, the 1-year-old child repetitively trying to obtain a toy that is firmly lodged under the couch, and the 2-year-old toddler trying to perform actions that are downright dangerous again and again, like trying to stick a fork in an electric socket. Look at all this (counter-productive) trying!

But I want to let you in on a little secret: despite our everyday observations, infants already traffic in sophisticated decisions about when and how to deploy effort (albeit these decisions likely occur outside their conscious awareness). Indeed, infants are increasingly skilled purveyors in the value of effort and when it best serves their goals. And, further, we, as the caregivers to these young children, provide infants with key lessons about both the value of effort overall, and its utility in the moment.

Parental input socializes infants and toddlers in the value of effort

A critical thing that infants and children need to learn about effort is its overall value: that trying hard is useful because it often (although not always) leads to successful outcomes. While the link between effort and success may be obvious to us as adults, consider the developmental requirements of this task. First, to appreciate how effort is linked to success, infants and toddlers need to associate a felt internal sensation with a concrete outcome, which may not be easy. Second, the relation between effort and success is not always obvious; one cannot always “see” that effort leads to success given often temporal delays between trying and achieving one’s goal.

Fortunately, children of all ages receive reliable signals from parents that highlight the value of effort. In one study, my colleagues and I⁶ investigated whether the frequency with which toddlers (18-month-olds) hear effort-related talk, and in particular, praise that highlighted the value of effort (what researchers call “process praise”), was associated with infants’ trying on challenging tasks (like trying to stack gears on a free-standing peg, or ejecting balls from tightly fit transparent tubes). We found that infants who heard frequent effort-related talk and process praise tried longer and harder on tasks than infants that heard this type of language less frequently. Critically, this effect was unique to language that highlighted the value of effort; generic praise (such as, “Yay!”) and praise that highlighted the dispositional qualities of infants (such as, “you are so smart!”) were unrelated to persistence. These findings show that what parents say influences how much infants try, presumably because it imparts to infants that trying is valuable.

In another study⁷, we tested a new idea about the role of effort-related praise in infants’ trying, tied to its timing: we speculated that effort-related praise might be most powerful for promoting infants’ trying behavior when it overlaps both their trying actions and their success. The idea here is that effort-related praise that overlaps both trying and success may serve to causally connect trying to success for infants. Our subsequent studies provided evidence for this hypothesis: effort-related praise was most effective in promoting persistence when it temporally overlapped both trying and success in infants’ actions versus when it occurred during trying alone, during success alone, or at random times. Thus, infants use what they are doing in the moment along with well-timed verbal input to begin to understand the importance of trying for successful outcomes.

Infants and toddlers make savvy decisions about how and when to deploy effort

Of course, no individual – infant or adult – can try constantly: time, resources, and energy are limited. More critically, to be successful one must have a way to decide *when* to try and *how* to try. Our research suggests that infants can do just that.

We have examined this question in two different ways. In one set of studies, we looked at toddlers’ willingness to help another person to achieve her goal, as a function of the amount of effort it required from the toddler. While prior work has demonstrated that infants begin to help others achieve their goals starting in the second year of life², our question was whether it mattered to infants if it was relatively hard or easy to do so. If infants are savvy in their deployment of effort, they should be more likely to help others when the required effort is low rather than high. Our work demonstrated that toddlers do indeed alter their helping behavior when effort is high versus low. For example, toddlers are much more likely to carry a block across a room to give it to an adult who needs it to complete her block tower when the block is light versus heavy³. Similarly, toddlers are more likely to bring an adult an object she desires when the object is easy for infants to find versus hard⁴. In other words, when the going gets tough, like adults, toddlers seek to minimize effort.

In other studies⁵, we have shown that toddlers make sophisticated decisions about whether to pursue their own goals as a function of anticipated effort, and their own expected success. For example, in one study infants were presented with a problem: they could pull a rope attached to a clear box to bring a desirable toy that was inside within reach. However, unbeknownst to infants we made this task impossible by gluing the container to the table. How long infants tried for (i.e., how long they spent pulling the rope) and how hard they tried (i.e., how hard they pulled the rope) depended on whether an adult was previously successful at the task, and how hard the adult had tried to solve the task. Infants tried hardest and longest when the adults’ actions communicated that the task was solvable but challenging to solve versus when they learned that the task was either unsolvable for the adult, or when they learned the task was easy for the adult but found the task challenging themselves.

Summary

Research to date suggests a new picture about the effort-filled world of infants. Infants and toddlers are savvy in how and when they decide to apply effort. These findings are interesting in and of their own right, but they may also help to explain how it is that infants are such rapid learners. To learn quickly, learners must have some way of figuring out when and how to devote their attention, and it appears that infants have this ability from at least the second year of life. Additionally, our findings tell us that the value of effort is imparted to young children in part through what adults and caregivers say and do. These results highlight the fact that effort deployment is malleable, and that we may be able to shape how children choose when and how to try starting early in development. Given the links between persistence and a host of desirable outcomes (such as educational attainment, personal success, and career outcomes⁸) these findings are encouraging for promoting optimal developmental trajectories.

Together, this new work suggests that adults and older children are not the only ones who have the means to answer the question “To try or not to try”. And, infants appear to come up with answers to this question that are helpful and adaptive to their learning and development.

References

1. Inzlicht, M., Amitai, S. & Olivola, C. Y (2018). “The effort paradox: Effort is both costly and valued.” Trends in cognitive sciences 22(4,) 337-349.
2. Warneken, F. (2015). Precocious prosociality: Why do young children help?. Child Development Perspectives, 9(1), 1-6.
3. Sommerville, J. A., Enright, E. A., Horton, R. O., Lucca, K., Sitch, M. J., & Kirchner-Adelhart, S. (2018). Infants’ prosocial behavior is governed by cost-benefit analyses. Cognition, 177, 12-20.

4. Radovanovic, M., Solby, H., Rose, K. S., Hwang, J., Yucer, E., & Sommerville, J. A. (2025). Toddlers’ helping behavior is affected by the effortful costs associated with helping others. Developmental Science, 28(1), e13569.
5. Lucca, K., Horton, R., & Sommerville, J. A. (2020). Infants rationally decide when and how to deploy effort. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(4), 372-379.
6. Lucca, K., Horton, R., & Sommerville, J. A. (2019). Keep trying!: Parental language predicts infants’ persistence. Cognition, 193, 104025.
7. Radovanovic, M., Soldovieri, A., & Sommerville, J. A. (2023). It takes two: Process praise linking trying and success is associated with greater infant persistence. Developmental Psychology, 59(9), 1668.
8. Duckworth, A., & Gross, J. J. (2014). Self-control and grit: Related but separable determinants of success. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(5), 319-325.

About the Author

Have you ever wondered why people respond so differently to the same stressful situation? My research focuses on understanding this question by studying individual differences in social and emotional development. Specifically, I investigate why and how infants and children vary in the way they express and regulate their emotions—often referred to as temperament. Ultimately, my goal is to uncover how characteristics of children (e.g., temperament) and their environment (e.g., prenatal environmental exposures, parenting, peers, and social context) interact to create the differences we observe in children’s social and emotional lives. By better understanding these differences, we can gain valuable insights into how our personalities develop – and, in some cases, how mental health problems emerge.

Building on decades of research, we now know that some differences in how people respond to stress can be evident as early as infancy. For example, when exposed to new situations, some infants and toddlers respond with hesitation, caution, and even fear, while others readily explore. My interest in these questions began during my undergraduate studies when I investigated how individual squirrels and rats responded differently to new experiences. Preliminarily, we found that individual differences in rats’ fear responses to novelty were relatively stable across contexts and developmental stages, further sparking my interest in temperament. Since then, I have focused my research on human infants and children, demonstrating that infants who are fearful or inhibited in new situations are more likely to grow up to be shy, reserved, and anxious as children, adolescents, and adults^1–3. These children are also at increased risk for anxiety and depression^1–8. Conversely, infants who are bold, highly active, and excited by novelty tend to be less reserved and more impulsive later in development. At the extreme, this early boldness can lead to challenges such as difficulty following rules and an increased risk of conduct and attention problems^1,9–11.

Importantly, while early reactions to novelty can provide clues about emotional and behavioral patterns later in life, not all individuals with either set of high-risk tendencies, even those at the extreme, go on to develop mental health problems. This suggests that other factors, including other individual characteristics of the child as well as external contextual influences, interact with temperament to shape development and outcomes.

In my own research, one child characteristic of particular interest is how children learn to self-regulate their attention, behaviors, and emotions. Self-regulation is a complex and dynamic ability, yet many studies rely solely on questionnaires or behavioral assessments to measure it, which can oversimplify things. To address this, I use various methods, including physiological measurements¹, neuroscience tools^12–14, micro-coding of behaviors¹⁵, computer-based tasks¹⁰, and more traditional parent-reported questionnaires^11,16. This multi-method approach spanning various aspects of self-regulation provides a nuanced understanding of how self-regulation mediates or moderates the relationship between early temperament and later mental health outcomes. For instance, my recent work differentiates between two components of self-regulation: 1) detecting important stimuli in one’s environment (e.g., threats or novelty) or actions (e.g., errors), and 2) implementing control in response to such stimuli (e.g., increasing attention or inhibiting behavior)^17,18. This distinction has helped resolve seemingly contradictory findings in the context of children’s temperament – such that there are mixed findings when self-regulation is considered as a single construct. However, when examined separately as detection and control processes, there is consistent evidence for their involvement (often in opposing directions) in the continuity of fearful temperament and its relation to future anxiety^6,19–21.

Another child characteristic that I focus on in my research is how children regulate their emotions. This may sound similar to the previous factor of self-regulation, but this factor is specifically focused on the regulation of one’s emotional responses. For instance, my collaborators and I have examined how children pay attention to others’ emotions, finding that this process acts as an automatic form of emotion regulation that shapes social and emotional development over time^10,11,22. In one study, we found that fearful children who also had a heightened attention bias to threats were more socially withdrawn as they transitioned to kindergarten²³. In another, we observed that bold, uninhibited children, particularly boys, who also had a heightened attention bias to rewards were more likely to exhibit behavioral problems¹⁰. Critically, children who had only one of the candidate predictors did not show these tendencies. We have also demonstrated that these attentional biases can be measured in infancy using tools like eye-tracking technology^24–26. Using this approach, we see that even at this early developmental stage, meaningful differences exist that we think may be due to certain contextual factors. For instance, infants of mothers with high anxiety symptoms showed a greater tendency to focus on threatening stimuli²⁷. This highlights the potential for using early markers of attention to predict later social and emotional outcomes. Currently, we are developing new measures of infant attention by measuring their brain activity while they observe others’ emotional expressions, with the goal of improving our understanding of how infants process emotions and their implications for social and emotional development.

In addition to examining individual child characteristics, I also study the role of external contextual factors such as parenting and early life experiences. My collaborators and I are exploring how maternal mental health, maternal physical health, and socioeconomic circumstances affect children’s development^28–33. One ongoing project uses caregivers’ smartphones to track their daily emotions, social contexts, experiences, and interactions with their infants. This approach aims to capture the real-world nuances of social and emotional development, identifying risk and protective factors that can inform interventions. Ultimately, this project will contribute to a larger longitudinal study integrating lab-based measures of behavior and brain function with real-world data to better understand the significance of these processes across development.

In summary, my work focuses on understanding how child characteristics, such as temperament and attentional biases, interact with environmental factors, like parenting and social context, to shape children’s socioemotional development. By studying these dynamics, we aim to uncover the roots of individual differences and better understand what makes each of us who we are.

If you are interested in our work, you can visit our website where we describe our current studies as well as how to get involved as a parent or researcher.

1. Morales, S., Beekman, C., Blandon, A. Y., Stifter, C. A., & Buss, K. A. (2015). Longitudinal associations between temperament and socioemotional outcomes in young children: The moderating role of RSA and gender. Developmental Psychobiology, 57(1), 105–119. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21267
2. Tan, E., Zeytinoglu, S., Morales, S., Buzzell, G. A., Almas, A. N., Degnan, K. A., Chronis-Tuscano, A., Henderson, H., Pine, D. S., & Fox, N. A. (2023). Social versus non-social behavioral inhibition: Differential prediction from early childhood of long-term psychosocial outcomes. Developmental Science, e13427.
3. Tang, A., Crawford, H., Morales, S., Degnan, K. A., Pine, D. S., & Fox, N. A. (2020). Infant behavioral inhibition predicts personality and social outcomes three decades later. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1917376117
4. Buss, K. A., Cho, S., Morales, S., McDoniel, M., Webb, A. F., Schwartz, A., Cole, P. M., Dorn, L. D., Gest, S., & Teti, D. M. (2021). Toddler dysregulated fear predicts continued risk for social anxiety symptoms in early adolescence. Development and Psychopathology, 33(1), 252–263.
5. Suarez, G. L., Morales, S., Miller, N. V., Penela, E. C., Chronis-Tuscano, A., Henderson, H. A., & Fox, N. A. (2021). Examining a developmental pathway from early behavioral inhibition to emotion regulation and social anxiety: The moderating role of parenting. Developmental Psychology, 57(8), 1261–1273. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001225
6. Buzzell, G. A., Morales, S., Bowers, M. E., Troller‐Renfree, S. V., Chronis‐Tuscano, A., Pine, D. S., Henderson, H. A., & Fox, N. A. (2021). Inhibitory control and set shifting describe different pathways from behavioral inhibition to socially anxious behavior. Developmental Science, 24(1), e13040. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13040
7. Morales, S., Taber-Thomas, B. C., & Pérez-Edgar, K. E. (2016). Patterns of attention to threat across tasks in behaviorally inhibited children at risk for anxiety. Developmental Science, 20(2). https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12391
8. Zeytinoglu, S., Morales, S., Lorenzo, N. E., Chronis-Tuscano, A., Degnan, K. A., Almas, A. N., Henderson, H., Pine, D. S., & Fox, N. A. (2021). A Developmental Pathway From Early Behavioral Inhibition to Young Adults’ Anxiety During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 60(10), 1300–1308. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2021.01.021
9. Buss, K. A., Kiel, E. J., Morales, S., & Robinson, E. (2014). Toddler Inhibitory Control, Bold Response to Novelty, and Positive Affect Predict Externalizing Symptoms in Kindergarten: Inhibitory Control, Positive Affect, and Externalizing. Social Development, 23(2), 232–249. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12058
10. Morales, S., Miller, N. V., Troller-Renfree, S. V., White, L. K., Degnan, K. A., Henderson, H. A., & Fox, N. A. (2020). Attention bias to reward predicts behavioral problems and moderates early risk to externalizing and attention problems. Development and Psychopathology, 32(2), 397–409. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579419000166
11. Morales, S., Pérez-Edgar, K., & Buss, K. (2016). Longitudinal relations among exuberance, externalizing behaviors, and attentional bias to reward: The mediating role of effortful control. Developmental Science, 19(5), 853–862. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12320
12. Morales, S., Vallorani, A., & Pérez-Edgar, K. (2019). Young children’s behavioral and neural responses to peer feedback relate to internalizing problems. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 36, 100610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2018.12.008
13. Morales, S., Bowers, M. E., Leach, S. C., Buzzell, G. A., Fifer, W., Elliott, A. J., & Fox, N. A. (2022). Time–frequency dynamics of error monitoring in childhood: An EEG study. Developmental Psychobiology, 64(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22215
14. Morales, S., Bowers, M. E., Leach, S. C., Buzzell, G. A., McSweeney, M., Yoder, L., Fifer, W., Elliott, A. J., & Fox, N. A. (2023). Development of auditory change-detection and attentional capture, and their relation to inhibitory control. Psychophysiology, 60(4), e14211. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.14211
15. Morales, S., Ram, N., Buss, K. A., Cole, P. M., Helm, J. L., & Chow, S.-M. (2017). Age-related changes in the dynamics of fear-related regulation in early childhood. Developmental Science, e12633. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12633
16. Morales, S., Tang, A., Bowers, M. E., Miller, N. V., Buzzell, G. A., Smith, E., Seddio, K., Henderson, H. A., & Fox, N. A. (2021). Infant temperament prospectively predicts general psychopathology in childhood. Development and Psychopathology, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579420001996
17. Morales, S., Zeytinoglu, S., Buzzell, G. A., Valadez, E. A., Troller-Renfree, S. V., Bowers, M. E., Chronis-Tuscano, A., Degnan, K. A., Almas, A. N., Pine, D. S., & Fox, N. A. (2021). Neurocognitive Profiles in Adolescence Predict Subsequent Anxiety Trajectories during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2021.06.004
18. Valadez, E. A., Morales, S., Buzzell, G. A., Troller-Renfree, S. V., Henderson, H. A., Chronis-Tuscano, A., Pine, D. S., & Fox, N. A. (2022). Development of Proactive Control and Anxiety Among Behaviorally Inhibited Adolescents. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, S0890856722002118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2022.04.012
19. Buzzell, G. A., Troller-Renfree, S. V., Morales, S., & Fox, N. A. (2018). Relations between Behavioral Inhibition, Cognitive Control, and Anxiety: Novel Insights Provided by Parsing Subdomains of Cognitive Control. In K. Pérez-Edgar & N. A. Fox (Eds.), Behavioral Inhibition: Integrating Theory, Research, and Clinical Perspectives (pp. 213–235). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98077-5_10
20. Fox, N. A., Buzzell, G. A., Morales, S., Valadez, E. A., Wilson, M., & Henderson, H. A. (2021). Understanding the Emergence of Social Anxiety in Children with Behavioral Inhibition. Biological Psychiatry, 89(7), 681–689. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2020.10.004
21. Fox, N. A., Zeytinoglu, S., Valadez, E. A., Buzzell, G. A., Morales, S., & Henderson, H. A. (2022). Annual Research Review: Developmental pathways linking early behavioral inhibition to later anxiety. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, n/a(n/a). https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13702
22. Morales, S., Fu, X., & Pérez-Edgar, K. E. (2016). A developmental neuroscience perspective on affect-biased attention. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 26–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2016.08.001
23. Morales, S., Pérez-Edgar, K. E., & Buss, K. A. (2014). Attention Biases Towards and Away from Threat Mark the Relation between Early Dysregulated Fear and the Later Emergence of Social Withdrawal. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-014-9963-9
24. Fu, X., Morales, S., LoBue, V., Buss, K. A., & Pérez-Edgar, K. (2020). Temperament moderates developmental changes in vigilance to emotional faces in infants: Evidence from an eye-tracking study. Developmental Psychobiology, 62(3), 339–352.
25. Pérez-Edgar, K., Morales, S., LoBue, V., Taber-Thomas, B. C., Allen, E. K., Brown, K. M., & Buss, K. A. (2017). The impact of negative affect on attention patterns to threat across the first 2 years of life. Developmental Psychology, 53(12), 2219.
26. Vallorani, A., Fu, X., Morales, S., LoBue, V., Buss, K. A., & Pérez-Edgar, K. (2021). Variable- and person-centered approaches to affect-biased attention in infancy reveal unique relations with infant negative affect and maternal anxiety. Scientific Reports, 11(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-81119-5
27. Morales, S., Brown, K. M., Taber-Thomas, B. C., LoBue, V., Buss, K. A., & Pérez-Edgar, K. E. (2017). Maternal Anxiety Predicts Attentional Bias Towards Threat in Infancy. Emotion, 17(5), 874–883. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000275
28. Hernandez, A., Sania, A., Bowers, M. E., Leach, S. C., McSweeney, M., Yoder, L., Fifer, W., Elliott, A. J., Shuffrey, L., Rauh, V., Him, D. A., Fox, N. A., & Morales, S. (2024). Examining the impact of prenatal maternal internalizing symptoms and socioeconomic status on children’s frontal alpha asymmetry and psychopathology. Developmental Psychobiology, 66(3), e22476. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22476
29. Morales, S., Bowers, M. E., Shuffrey, L., Ziegler, K., Troller-Renfree, S., Hernandez, A., Leach, S. C., McGrath, M., Ola, C., Leve, L. D., Nozadi, S. S., Swingler, M. M., Lai, J.-S., Schweitzer, J. B., Fifer, W., Camargo Jr., C. A., Khurana Hershey, G. K., Shapiro, A. L. B., Keating, D. P., … Elliott, A. J. (2024). Maternal education prospectively predicts child neurocognitive function: An environmental influences on child health outcomes study. Developmental Psychology, No Pagination Specified-No Pagination Specified. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001642
30. Rayport, Y. K., Morales, S., Shuffrey, L. C., Hockett, C. W., Ziegler, K., Rao, S., Fifer, W. P., Elliott, A. J., & Sania, A. (2024). Prenatal risk factors for child executive function at 3–5 years of age: The roles of maternal mood, substance use, and socioeconomic adversity in a prospective cohort study. BMC Pediatrics, 24(1), 682. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-024-05113-2
31. Shuffrey, L. C., Lucchini, M., Morales, S., Sania, A., Hockett, C., Barrett, E., Carroll, K. N., Cioffi, C. C., Dabelea, D., Deoni, S., Dunlop, A. L., Deutsch, A., Fifer, W. P., Firestein, M. R., Hedderson, M. M., Jacobson, M., Kelly, R. S., Kerver, J. M., Mason, W. A., … Monk, C. (2022). Gestational diabetes mellitus, prenatal maternal depression, and risk for postpartum depression: An Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Study. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-022-05049-4
32. Shuffrey, L. C., Morales, S., Jacobson, M. H., Bosquet Enlow, M., Ghassabian, A., Margolis, A. E., Lucchini, M., Carroll, K. N., Crum, R. M., Dabelea, D., Deutsch, A., Fifer, W. P., Goldson, B., Hockett, C. W., Mason, W. A., Jacobson, L. T., O’Connor, T. G., Pini, N., Rayport, Y., … program collaborators for Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes. (2023). Association of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus and Perinatal Maternal Depression with Early Childhood Behavioral Problems: An Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes ( ECHO ) Study. Child Development, 94(6), 1595–1609. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13938
33. Xu, X., Buzzell, G. A., Bowers, M. E., Shuffrey, L. C., Leach, S. C., McSweeney, M., Yoder, L., Fifer, W. P., Myers, M. M., Elliott, A. J., Fox, N. A., & Morales, S. (2024). Electrophysiological correlates of inhibitory control in children: Relations with prenatal maternal risk factors and child psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579424000816

About the Author

Two of Clancy’s most influential publications exemplify the impact of his research. In his 2002 manuscript in American Psychologist, Clancy proposed a neurobiological model of self-regulation development, emphasizing the critical role of emotionality in shaping cognitive processes essential for school readiness. This model underscored the plasticity of early development and the importance of supportive environments, amplifying the need for early educational policies and interventions. In their 2012 Developmental Psychology paper, Clancy and Cybele Raver integrated evolutionary and developmental perspectives to explore how self-regulation emerges through dynamic interactions between genes, environments, and stress physiology. This probabilistic epigenetic model emphasizes how early caregiving and adversity shape stress response systems and developmental trajectories. Calling attention to the adaptability of self-regulation, they presented reactive behaviors as contextually adaptive in high-stress environments but recalibrated in supportive ones. This perspective broadened the field’s understanding of self-regulation, acknowledging its challenges and benefits across ecological contexts.

Clancy’s achievements were remarkable. He authored over 200 peer-reviewed articles and received numerous awards and grants. However, beyond his scholarly contributions, he will be remembered most for his kindness, mentorship, and the profound impact he had on those fortunate enough to work with him. Alongside his collaborator and spouse Cybele Raver, Clancy co-founded the Neuroscience and Education Lab at NYU – a vibrant, inclusive space that fostered meaningful connections among its members. The relationships formed within Clancy’s lab extended far beyond its walls, with many members becoming lifelong friends and professional colleagues. Clancy’s collaborative and thoughtful approach to mentorship enabled his students to thrive, and his passion for science was both inspiring and contagious. He believed deeply in each of his students, demonstrating this with genuine smiles, enthusiastic encouragement, and thought-provoking conversations. In 2022, Clancy’s exceptional mentorship was recognized with the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology Award for Outstanding Mentorship.

As we reflect on Clancy’s life and career, it is impossible not to be struck by the breadth and depth of his contributions. His pioneering research transformed our understanding of the interplay between cognitive and emotional development, while his mentorship inspired countless young scientists. Clancy is remembered among his mentees, staff, and peers for his sharp wit and unmistakably cool, punk-rock style. He championed bold ideas, demonstrated kindness within collaborations, and believed in the transformative power of research to make a difference. His unwavering commitment to social justice was integral to his work. Through public panels, community outreach, and dissemination of his research, Clancy used science as a force for good, leaving a lasting legacy of socially conscious research. As we continue the work he began, we do so with profound gratitude for his guidance and a determination to uphold his spirit of discovery, advocacy, and compassion.

About the Author

Aubrianna Gerdes from the University of Kansas worked with Dr. Efthymios Papatzikis from Oslo Metropolitan University to look at how the premature infant responds to music measured by EEG. Premature infants are at risk for developmental delays. This risk may be further exacerbated by the loud and chaotic environment of the NICU. Her project aimed to create a preprocessing pipeline for EEG data collection with premature infants in the NICU. Her results suggest that this approach is a promising avenue for research on the impact of music in premature infants.

Cole Kaufmann from the University of Iowa and was mentored by Drs. Elena Luchkina and Elizabeth Spelke from Harvard University on identifying patterns of attention to screen media in typically developing infants. Using an existing dataset of 15- to 18-month-old infants, they found that both language ability and socio-economic status predicted infants’ sustained attention. These results suggests that language development might be particularly important for sustained attention for infants from low-SES backgrounds.

Iliad Nazari from the University of Minnesota worked with Dr. Elika Bergelson from Harvard University investigating babbling in blind infants, who tend to lag behind sighted infants in language production. So they asked, does a lack of sight affect the progression of babbling between 6 to 15 months of age? They found that blind infants initially lag behind sighted infants in babbling progression, and produce a lower number of canonical utterances. However, they eventually catch up, suggesting that initial visual input or feedback might be important for learning to early vocalization development.

Melody Ojo from the University of Surrey worked with Dr. Alexandra Hendry from the University of Oxford on inhibitory control in 20-month-old infants with a family history of autism or ADHD. In their task, infants had to resist the urge to touch a colorful glitter wand that was placed in front of them. Researchers found that infant behavior during this task did not differ between the autism and ADHD familial likelihood groups.

El Smith from Lancaster University worked with Dr. Jessica Sommerville from the University of Toronto on how caregiver process paise timing relates to infant and toddler persistence during challenging play tasks. Although caregiver process praise has been linked to children’s persistence in previous research, the timing of process praise might also be important. The researchers investigated whether the contingency of process praise affects persistence and data collection is still ongoing.

We congratulate these fantastic undergraduate fellows for producing such rigorous and compelling research this summer and look forward to following their career paths as emerging infant scientists!

Request for applications for the next Founding Generation Summer Fellowship for Undergraduates 2025 will be released in the Winter 2025.

About the Author

One closely related skill to self-control is inhibitory control, a critical executive function that allows individuals to stop themselves from acting impulsively. Without inhibitory control, waiting for the marshmallow would be impossible! It is the force that prevents you from buying that coffee on your way to work when you’re trying to save money, or from typing in your old computer password after you’ve changed to a new one. Inhibitory control is pivotal across the lifespan, influencing everything from academic success (Jaekel et al., 2016) to emotional regulation (Hudson & Jacques, 2014). Much of our knowledge about inhibitory control comes from research with adults; this makes sense, there are lots of things that adults have to stop themselves from doing. And indeed, young children just aren’t very good at stopping themselves from performing a preferred or practiced response. It is often up to parents and caregivers to intervene to help them do so. We tell children when to stop, we say “no”, we teach them to “wait until it’s cooled down before we eat it, otherwise we will burn ourselves”. As such, it should not be a surprise to learn that young children have poor inhibitory control. Yet, research has shown that inhibitory control skills emerge already in the first year of life (Holmboe et al., 2008, 2018)

So how do babies and toddlers fare in terms of inhibitory control? Do they have any control skills at all? If they do, are these skills learned through experience? How do these skills broaden and develop?

During my doctoral research at the University of Oxford, I explored precisely these questions. Through a longitudinal study, we tracked infants and toddlers aged 10 months, 16 months, and 42 months to assess their inhibitory control abilities. Using a novel touchscreen task (the Early Childhood Inhibitory Touchscreen Task; Holmboe et al., 2021), we tested children’s ability to inhibit prepotent (well-learned) responses. This task involved prompting participants to touch a “happy face” button, with the majority of trials appearing on one side of the screen (prepotent trials). Touching the happy face would bring up an animation of a cartoon animal accompanied by funny sounds, whereas touching the blank button on the other side of the screen would not cause anything to happen. However, on occasion (25%; inhibitory trials), the happy face would appear on the opposite side of the screen than it usually did. This required participants to inhibit their prepotent response and make an alternate response in order to see the cartoon.

Our findings revealed that infants and toddlers exhibited limited inhibitory control, with response accuracy dropping significantly when inhibition was required (Fiske et al., 2022; 2024). However, by the age of 42 months, there was a marked improvement in inhibitory control performance (Fiske et al., in prep), suggesting significant developmental changes during this period (unsurprising when you consider the difference between a 16-month-old toddler and a 3½-year-old preschooler!). Future research should examine predictors of inhibitory control performance in the second and third years of life, as it is likely that inhibitory control abilities improve with the acquisition of language and the consolidation of motor skills involved in walking and exploring the environment in toddlerhood.

Whilst children were completing the touchscreen task, we measured their brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a child-friendly optical imaging technique. Interestingly, even at 10 months of age, infants exhibited neural activation in the right prefrontal and parietal cortices on trials where inhibition was required – the same brain regions associated with inhibitory control in older children and adults (Fiske et al., 2022). Furthermore, the fNIRS results highlighted that, despite no improvement in inhibitory behaviour, there were changes in the neural substrates from infancy (10-months) to toddlerhood (16-months), such that activation was seen bilaterally and across more regions of the prefrontal cortex, specifically, the inferior frontal gyrus (Fiske et al., 2024). These findings could indicate that the transition to toddlerhood includes a period of neural reorganisation or specialisation in the prefrontal cortex. Finally, we found that activation in both the right inferior parietal cortex and the right inferior frontal gyrus was relatively consistent from 16-months to 3½ years, possibly marking the start of the formation of a mature response inhibition brain network (Fiske et al., in prep).

In summary, while babies and toddlers may initially struggle with inhibitory control, their abilities improve significantly with age, guided by both experience and neural development. While our understanding of inhibitory control development in infants and toddlers is still evolving, this research sheds new light on the emergence and progression of these skills across early childhood. As I continue to delve deeper into this fascinating area of research in the future, I hope to gain valuable insights into the intricate process of inhibitory control development from infancy and across the early years of life.

References

Fiske, A., de Klerk, C., Lui, K. Y., Collins-Jones, L., Hendry, A., Greenhalgh, I., … & Holmboe, K. (2022). The neural correlates of inhibitory control in 10-month-old infants: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study. NeuroImage, 257, 119241.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119241

Fiske, A., Collins-Jones, L. H., de Klerk, C., Lui, K. Y., Hendry, A., Greenhalgh, I., … Holmboe, K. (2024). The Neural Correlates of Response Inhibition across the Transition from Infancy to Toddlerhood: An fNIRS study. Imaging Neuroscience, 2. 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1162/imag_a_00206

Fiske, A., Mortimer, A., Collins-Jones, L.H., de Klerk, C., Gattas, S., Dvergsdal, H., …. & Holmboe, K. (in prep). Inhibitory Control Development from Infancy to Early Childhood: A Longitudinal fNIRS Study. Pre-registered at: https://osf.io/swe2j

Friedman, N. P., Miyake, A., Robinson, J. L., & Hewitt, J. K. (2011). Developmental trajectories in toddlers’ self-restraint predict individual differences in executive functions 14 years later: a behavioral genetic analysis. Developmental psychology, 47(5), 1410. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023750

Holmboe, K., Fearon, R. P., Csibra, G., Tucker, L. A., & Johnson, M. H. (2008). Freeze-Frame: A new infant inhibition task and its relation to frontal cortex tasks during infancy and early childhood. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 100(2), 89-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2007.09.004

Holmboe, K., Bonneville‐Roussy, A., Csibra, G., & Johnson, M. H. (2018). Longitudinal development of attention and inhibitory control during the first year of life. Developmental science, 21(6), e12690. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12690

Holmboe, K., Larkman, C., de Klerk, C., Simpson, A., Bell, M. A., Patton, L., … & Dvergsdal, H. (2021). The early childhood inhibitory touchscreen task: A new measure of response inhibition in toddlerhood and across the lifespan. PloS one, 16(12), e0260695. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260695

Hudson, A., & Jacques, S. (2014). Put on a happy face! Inhibitory control and socioemotional knowledge predict emotion regulation in 5-to 7-year-olds. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 123, 36-52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2014.01.012

Jaekel, J., Eryigit-Madzwamuse, S., & Wolke, D. (2016). Preterm toddlers’ inhibitory control abilities predict attention regulation and academic achievement at age 8 years. The Journal of pediatrics, 169, 87-92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2015.10.029

Kahle, S., Utendale, W. T., Widaman, K. F., & Hastings, P. D. (2018). Parasympathetic regulation and inhibitory control predict the development of externalizing problems in early childhood. Journal of abnormal child psychology, 46(2), 237-249. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-017-0305-6

Razza, R. A., & Raymond, K. (2013). Associations among maternal behavior, delay of gratification, and school readiness across the early childhood years. Social Development, 22(1), 180-196.  https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2012.00665.x

About the Author

In our recent Newsletter, we introduced the new ICIS Communications Committee team members for the 2024-2027 cycle. In addition to Kiley Hamlin, Vanessa LoBue, Jessica Bradshaw, and Ron Seifer, and with thanks to outgoing members Mireille Babineau and Sheena Carter, we would like to introduce the five new members joining the team:

Amanda Delgado, M.A. is a doctoral student at the University of Delaware specializing in Learning Sciences. She conducts research on ways children engage with and learn from storybooks and digital media, as well as investigates methods to promote children’s spatial development. Amanda organizes the Newsletter and produces content for the parent-directed Instagram account. She loves to cook and attend concerts, and is a Mini Crossword enthusiast. She can be found on Twitter/X and LinkedIn.

Samantha Gott, M.A. is an experimental psychology Ph.D. candidate with a concentration in behavioral neuroscience at Florida Atlantic University. Her focus is on developmental neurophysiology, neurogenetics, and neurochemistry. She is investigating coherence electroencephalography (EEG), oxytocin, and cortisol measures in relation to temperament, biobehavioral and neurological activity, and epigenetic programming features in infancy and across development. Samantha gathers new resources from various members and sources for ICIS members’ professional development for the newsletter, networks with developmental scientists, and creates the communications committees surveys. She enjoys getting out into nature with friends and family whenever possible. She can be found on LinkedIn.

Ixchel Peyrot Negrete, PhD is a research collaborator in the Infant Laboratory of the Faculty of Psychology in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. During her PhD she studied mental rotation through the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm (IPLP) and its relation with language in 12-months-old infants. Currently, she continues to work on that topic with 18-and-24-months-old infants. Ixchel runs the TikTok and YouTube channels. She loves to do mobile photography, dancing and coffee. She can be found on Twitter/X and LinkedIn.

Maheen Siddiqui, PhD is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck. During her PhD, Maheen developed a novel type of multi-modal neuroimaging system that combined near-infrared spectroscopy with EEG to obtain simultaneous measures of neural activity, haemodynamics and energy metabolism in infants, allowing investigation of neurovascular coupling. She is currently expanding on this line of work to explore typical development, neurodevelopmental disorders and clinical populations using multi-modal neuroimaging. Maheen produces content for the Instagram account. She is a mum of two who loves cooking and cross-fit. She also runs the Diversity in Developmental Science Network. She can be found on Twitter/X and LinkedIn.

Rui Qi Choo, PhD is a Research Fellow at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Associate Faculty at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. In her PhD she studied the speech patterns of Singaporean children learning Mandarin. She then helped develop protocols for measuring language metrics (e.g., mean length utterance) in multilingual translanguaging Singapore and has a keen interest in the kinship terms of address that multilingual Singaporean families use. She also teaches Developmental Psychology and bilingualism- related modules at SUSS. Rui Qi posts about Infancy papers on the Twitter/X, Bluesky, LinkedIn Page and LinkedIn account pages and produces content for the Instagram account. She dabbles in doodling, Chinese calligraphy and making kasut manek (beaded shoes) when she’s not chipping away at her research data or teaching. She can be found on Twitter/X, Bluesky and LinkedIn.

If you’ve recently published a paper in Infancy, or are doing something exciting that we would like to share with everyone else, look out for our emails contacting you!