Biography

Clancy Blair, PhD is a Professor of Cognitive Psychology in the Department of Applied Psychology in Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. He earned a BA at McGill University and an MPH in maternal and child health, and PhD in developmental psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has been conducting research on self-regulation in children for over two decades with a specific focus on the development of executive functions. This research has demonstrated that executive functions are central to school readiness and school achievement, are substantially influenced by experience and the characteristics of the family and home environment, and highly interrelated with the regulation of stress response physiology. An important focus of this research is on the ways in which experience ‘gets under the skin’ to influence the development of executive functions through effects on stress physiology. This mechanism is one that appears to be particularly relevant to the effect of poverty on children’s development and may be one primary route through which childhood poverty exerts long-term influence on cognitive and social-emotional development into adulthood.

1-005 - The Development of Self-Regulation in Early Childhood: An Applied Psychobiological Model

Session Type: Invited Address

Integrative Statement

Researchers interested in self-regulation are confronted with an array of constructs, terms, and definitions. This talk presents a developmental psychobiological model that brings some conceptual clarity to research on self-regulation. In the model, self-regulation emerges from integrated processes at the biological and behavioral levels that are shaped by the social and cultural contexts in which development is occurring. One of the implications of the model is that in highly disadvantaged contexts, self-regulation is more likely to be reactive and less prototypically well regulated. A growing body of research, however, indicates that reflective self-regulation such as that required for success in school can be fostered through supports for families and through innovative programs that enhance the quality of children’s early experiences. The model will be illustrated with data from a large longitudinal study as well as with data from several early education experiments.

Sub Unit

• Invited Program on Poverty, Inequality & Developmental Science

Chair

• Natalia Palacios, University of Virginia

Speaker

• Clancy B. Blair, New York University