The big picture Thanks to modern neonatal care, more preterm babies are surviving than ever before. Yet more than thirteen million babies worldwide are still born early each year, and many spend their first days or weeks in neonatal intensive-care units (NICUs) ([1];...
Sustaining Scientific Progress
A funny thing happened in the infant lab: What humor can teach us about how infants think
Two things happened early in my career that changed everything, personally and professionally: I had a baby and within a few months, he began to laugh. It was the simplest but most astounding developmental observation I had made, effectively turning my research focus...
Language learning in a digital world: How screen time impacts children’s language development
We have all seen dramatic taglines about the impact of screens on children’s development such as “Too much screen time harms children” or “More screen time linked to delayed development”. These claims rest on research showing that, in general, digital media has been...
From the mouths of babes: Saying the (im)perceptible.
As a kid, I was an avid consumer of sci-fi/fantasy books, which I’d get in unremarkable hardcover from the local library. When I would later see the dust jackets or movie versions of these fictional worlds, I’d often have a strong reaction along the lines of “that’s...




