The Baby Blog
A place to highlight new published findings, shine a spotlight on the researchers in our field, and share new tools of the trade that might help make life easier for ICIS Membership.
In Memoriam: Thérèse Gouin Décarie
I wish to share the sad news that Professor Thérèse Gouin Décarie (1923-2024) has passed away on April 2nd. Professor Décarie was internationally known for her research on infant development and has been a leader in the establishment of the field of developmental...
Electronic books for Ukrainian children soften the blows of war
by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, University of Delaware (USA) & Natalia Kucirkova, University of Stavanger (Norway) In 1971, Michael S. Hart digitized the U.S. Declaration of Independence, making it the first e-book in the world. When e-books for children began to...
Making fathers more visible in parenting research
by Natasha J. Cabrera, Ph.D. & Pinar Karan, MA. In 2018, my colleagues and I wrote an article emphasizing the non-contested fact that fathers are parents too, and that research on parents should intentionally include them (Cabrera, Volling, & Barr, 2018). We...
Protecting Maternal Health – For the sake of mothers and their children
by Vanessa LoBue January 23, 2024 will mark the 8th Annual Maternal Health Awareness Day—the one day a year we come together to raise awareness about the country’s maternal morbidity crisis and how we can improve physical and mental health outcomes for mothers. This...
Rethinking Perturbations in Naturalistic Studies of Development
Drew H. Abney University of Georgia For many decades, some developmental scientists have used the framework of dynamic systems to guide theory and prediction about how human infants change while embedded in a complex, social world. A dynamic systems framework has...
In Memoriam: Deborah Kemler Nelson
Deborah Kemler Nelson On November 13, 2023, our field lost a shining star. Professor Deborah Kemler Nelson, the Centennial Chair Emerita of Swarthmore College, passed away surrounded by her loving family. Debby got her PhD in psychology from Brown University with her...
Families with LGBTQ+ Parents: Transitions to Parenthood and Early Child Development
by Rachel H. Farr, PhD As LGBTQ+ parenthood (via varied pathways) increases worldwide, parents and providers benefit from information about parenthood and early child development1,2,3,4,5: What can LGBTQ+ parents and their partners expect during the transition to...
Report from the 2023 Founding Generation Symposium
By Vanessa LoBue (@vanessalobue) & Kiley Hamlin (@jkileyhamlin) The Founding Generation Summer Fellowship for Undergraduates aims to develop the next generation of scholars to advance innovative research on infancy and translation of research for the public good....
Autism and Development
by Daniel Messinger and Alyssa Viggiano(Jointly authored; written from Daniel’s perspective) Autism is a common and sometimes debilitating neurodevelopmental disorder whose symptoms typically emerge in the first three years of life. By focusing on three areas of...
ICIS Webinar Recap: Cutting-Edge Approaches in Developmental EEG
Developmental electroencephalography (EEG) is a constantly evolving field with researchers actively exploring cutting-edge approaches to studying brain development. One novel approach involves looking at live, naturalistic interactions by measuring changes in an...