Society’s First Line of Defense

An Interview with Developmental Psychologist Deborah Phillips

Abstract: The field of developmental psychology offers new insights into the link between the quality and nature of early relationships with caregivers to the healthy social, emotional, and cognitive development of young children. Three dimensions of child care seem to make the most difference: the interactions between young children and their caregivers, the child’s individual temperament, and the peer dynamics in the childcare environment. Under conditions of extreme, persistent poverty, the healthy development of young children is compromised in many ways. Early intervention, detection and prevention are society’s first line of defense against a wide range of future disabilities ranging from mild to severe.

Council Member Deborah A. Phillips is Professor and Chair of Psychology at Georgetown University and Co-Director of Georgetown’s Center for Research on Children in the United States. Prior to her current position, she was the Executive Director of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Research Council’s Commission on Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. Her research concerns early child development, childcare and early intervention, and public policy. She has served on the Advisory Committee for the National Children’s Study, the Task Force on Meeting the Needs of Young Children of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the research task force of the Secretary’s (US DHHS) Advisory Committee on Head Start Quality and Expansion, and the Brookings Institution’s Roundtable on Children. She served as Study Director for the Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development for the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and co-edited its final report, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society. She earned a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Yale University.

Can you explain to readers how positive interaction between a child and his/her caregiver can strengthen the architecture of the brain?

In my own field of developmental psychology and in related disciplines, we are learning more than ever before about the link between the quality and nature of early relationships—particularly those with early caregivers—and the healthy social, emotional, and cognitive development of young children. Sensitive, encouraging give-and-take between the caregiver and a child is the active ingredient of childcare quality. When caregivers interact regularly in affectionate, stimulating ways, children thrive in childcare. The same is true, of course, for parents. Children need to be with adults who are crazy about them and, just as important, who want and know how to foster their healthy development.

Having said this, though, we have to acknowledge that there’s still a fairly big leap required to go from healthy childhood development in the broad sense to the specific functioning of the human brain. This is one of the most exciting scientific frontiers. Several of my colleagues, especially the neuroscientists on the National Scientific Council, can better explain cutting-edge findings about how positive interaction actually strengthens the brain’s architecture.

For example, research by Megan Gunnar looks at how adverse childcare environments - those that fail to provide young children with the supports they need for healthy development - do seem to create high levels of stress and excess production of stress hormones in some young children. [For a more detailed explanation, please see the Council working paper, “Excessive Stress Disrupts the Architecture of the Developing Brain,” or the article “Stress and the Architecture of the Brain.”] What’s causing this? There are three dimensions of childcare that seem to make the most difference: First, the interactions between young children and the caregivers; second, the child’s individual temperament; and third, the peer dynamics in that childcare environment.

From my own research, I believe that peer dynamics in childcare have not been given the attention they deserve if we are to figure out how to do a better job in supporting children. Many young children attend childcare with unrelated babies or toddlers starting from their earliest months of life. If they’re lucky enough to be with a caregiver who knows how to foster positive peer interactions—how to encourage play with other children, how to teach children to be empathetic and how to handle conflict, for example—they’re likely to benefit and absorb valuable social skills. But without the support of a skilled caregiver, new peer groups like this can also pose challenges to young children, perhaps especially those who are shy to begin with, or who have a hard time with self-control.

And what about your other broad area of professional study—the effects of poverty? Do we know what, specifically, affects brain development or healthy social/emotional growth?

Under conditions of extreme and persistent poverty—and poverty in the early childhood years in particular—there are so many negative influences that go together. Poverty often identifies a constellation of factors that pose risks to child development.

Through no fault of their own, of course, children growing up in poverty are more likely to face circumstances during their earliest years that can compromise their healthy development. These include unsafe neighborhoods, poorer health care, and more limited access to top-notch childcare and, later, schools. At the same time, their parents often have far less access to supportive jobs—ones that pay well, enable them to be at home when their children wake up in the morning or come home from school, and provide benefits like health insurance, support for dependent care, or flexible schedules. These stressors in the child’s environment can have a decided effect on the strength of a child’s developing brain architecture, as my Council colleagues point out, making it more susceptible to harm from future stress, for example.

Beyond that, other realities for too many poor children—poor nutrition and exposure to violence, for example—are known to impede healthy development. Not surprisingly, the more risk factors are present, the worse the outcome for children.

For information about commonly used terms in Council publications, see Definitions.