2004-2007

 

A selection of articles and peer-reviewed papers published by individual Council members. For peer-reviewed papers, articles, and reports from the Council as a whole, see our Publications area.

• Council Members Charles Nelson and Nathan Fox co-authored “Cognitive Recovery in Socially Deprived Young Children: The Bucharest Early Intervention Project” (December 21, 2007). Of children placed in institutions and then moved to foster care, cognitive outcomes were most improved for the youngest children moved to foster care, emphasizing the advantages of family placement. This article can be read in Science, 318:1937-1940.1.

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• Council Member Megan Gunnar co-authored “Early care experiences and HPA axis regulation in children: a mechanism for later trauma vulnerability” in Progress in Brain Research (2007); 167:137-149.

• Council Member Greg Duncan co-authored a paper, Penny Wise and Effect Size Foolish, with Katherine Magnuson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This article suggests steps to be taken when applied developmental research provides concrete policy recommendations, including scaling policy-relevant variables and providing rough cost-benefit estimates of recommendations. This article was published in Child Development Perspectives, 1(1):46-51.

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• Council Member Charles A. Nelson authored an article in the July 2007 issue of Child Development Perspectives, 1(1):13-18, entitled A Neurobiological Perspective on Early Human Deprivation. In this paper, Nelson discusses the global increase in children who are placed in institutional settings due to war, AIDS, and poverty. Given what is already known about the negative developmental outcomes experienced by children in institutional care, Nelson examines the neural mechanisms that likely underlie this maldevelopment.

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• Reducing Poverty through Preschool Interventions: This paper by Council Member Greg J. Duncan, the Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Education and Social Policy and Faculty Associate in the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, along with Jens Ludwig of Georgetown University and NBER and Katherine A. Magnuson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, makes the case for a national, intensive, education-focused intervention for 3- and 4-year-olds who are disadvantaged. The article appears in the Fall 2007 issue of The Future of Children, a publication of The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and The Brookings Institution, 17(2): 143-160.

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• Council Member Charles A. Nelson co-authored a chapter, "Neurological Development," in the Encyclopedia of Infant and Child Development, currently in press and due to be published in late 2007.
• Council Member Greg Duncan was one of four authors of a recent report published by the Center for American Progress, “The Economic Costs of Poverty in the United States: Subsequent Effects of Children Growing Up Poor.” The report attempts to quantify the economic case for reducing child poverty, examining the impact on them as individuals later in life and on society of having grown up in poverty. “Our results suggest that the costs to the U.S. Associated with childhood poverty total about $500B per year, or the equivalent of nearly 4 percent of GDP,” states the report. Specifically regarding the impact of interventions in early childhood, the report concludes, “very high-quality early childhood efforts could overcome a very large part, though perhaps not all, of the costs of poverty.”

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• Council Member Ross Thompson co-authored a chapter, "The social and emotional foundations of school readiness," in the book Social and emotional health in early childhood: Building bridges between services and systems, by D.F. Perry, R.K. Kaufmann, and J. Knitzer (eds.).
• Council Members Charles A. Nelson and Nathan A. Fox co-authored "The Caregiving Context in Institution-Reared and Family-Reared Infants and Toddlers in Romania," published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (February 2007); 48:210-218. The article assessed differences in caregiving environments of young children raised in institutions in Romania in relation to developmental characteristics.

• Council member Megan Gunnar and Karina Quevedo's article, " Developmental Biology of Stress," appears in the January 2007 edition of the Annual Review of Psychology. Vol 58, . S. Fiske (Ed.)

• Council Chair Dr. Jack Shonkoff was interviewed for "The Stressed-Out Child," an article in Child magazine (December 2006). "We now know that excessive, long-lasting stress in children who lack stable and nurturing relationships with caring adults can be literally toxic to developing brains."

• Former Council Member Betsy Lozoff, Elias Jimenez, and Julia B. Smith published the "Double burden of iron deficiency in infancy and low socio-economic status: a longitudinal analysis of impact on cognitive test scores to 19 years" in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (November 2006); 160:1108-1113.

• Council member Deborah Phillips co-edited the Blackwell Handbook of Early Childhood Development(February 2006), and several Council members are among the contributors. Charles A. Nelson and Jane W. Couperus wrote "Early Brain Development and Plasticity;" Megan R. Gunnar wrote "Social Regulation of Stress in Early Child Development;" Jennifer N. Martin and Nathan A. Fox wrote "Temperament;" Ross A. Thompson and Kristin H. Lagattuta wrote "Feeling and Understanding: Early Emotional Development;" and Deborah Phillips, Kathleen McCartney, and Amy L. Sussman wrote "Child Care and Early Childhood Education."

• Catch 'Em Young: Nobel Prize-winning economist James J. Heckman, Former Council Contributing Member, Henry Schultz Distinguished Service recipient and Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, wrote this op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, discussing the economic benefits of early childhood intervention.

  "Experimental interventions that enrich early childhood environments have been shown to produce more successful adults by raising both cognitive and noncognitive skills. At current levels of spending, early interventions targeted toward disadvantaged children have much higher economic returns than later interventions, such as reduced pupil-teacher ratios, public job training, convict rehabilitation programs, tuition subsidies or expenditure on police."

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• The American Prospect's May 2005 issue includes an article by Council Chair Jack P. Shonkoff, titled
  "The Non-Nuclear Option." This essay discusses how social investment can help produce healthy children and strong families.

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• The November 2004 issue of The American Prospect includes an article by Council Member Ross Thompson.  "Shaping the Brains of Tomorrow" is among a number of articles in the issue's Special Report: Starting Young, which focus on the case for public investment in early childhood development.

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