Natasha J. Cabrera | |
---|---|
Occupation | Professor of Human Development |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Toronto; University of Denver |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Maryland,College Park |
Natasha J. Cabrera is a Canadian developmental psychologist known for her research on children's cognitive and social development,focusing primarily on fathers' involvement and influence on child development,ethnic and cultural variations in parenting behaviors,and factors associated with developmental risk. [1] [2] She holds the position of Professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methods at the University of Maryland,College of Education, [3] where she is Director of the Family Involvement Laboratory [4] and affiliated with the Maryland Population Research Center. [5] Cabrera also holds the position of Secretary on the Governing Council of the Society for the Research on Child Development [6] and has served as Associate Editor of Early Childhood Research Quarterly and Child Development. [7] Her research has been featured in The Wall Street Journal , [8] Education Week , [9] Time , [10] and The Atlantic. [11]
Cabrera is co-editor of several books,including From welfare to child care:What happens to young children when single mothers exchange welfare for work, [12] Handbook of U.S. Latino Psychology:Developmental and community-based perspectives, [13] [14] Latina and Latino Child Psychology and Mental Health, [15] and Handbook of Father Involvement:Multidisciplinary Perspectives. [16]
Cabrera graduated from the University of Toronto with BS degree in psychology in 1985 and MS degree in Philosophy of Education in 1989. [17] She attended graduate school at the University of Denver,School of Education,where she obtained her Ph.D. in Educational and Developmental Psychology in 1994. [17]
After graduation,Cabrera worked as Study Director for the Roundtable on Head Start Research,Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education,Board on Children and Families National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences from 1995 to 1996. She held the position of Executive Branch Fellow,sponsored by the Society for Research on Child Development (SRCD) under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) from 1996 to 1998. Cabrera worked at the NICHD as an Expert in Child Development before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland in 2002. While at NICHD,Cabrera received the On-the-Spot Award,Individual Merit Award and Staff Recognition Award in 1997,1999,and 2000,and the Administration for Children and Families,United States Department of Health and Human Service Secretary's Distinguished Service Award and Fatherhood Leadership Award in 2000 and 2003. [18]
Cabrera's research on the influence of fathers in children's development has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health. [19] [20]
Cabrera is known for her work addressing how fathers' involvement impacts children's development—a topic that has received considerably less research attention than mothers' participation in children's lives. By focusing on fathers' involvement in relation to family and child outcomes,her research furthers understanding of parenting behaviors that impact children's cognitive and emotional well-being.
Cabrera started her research by investigating the effects of fathers' involvement in the lives of children and families on existing social policies,such as child support,welfare,and others. [21] By examining how modern social trends are changing fathers' contributions to child development, [22] her research team has proposed several social programs and initiatives. [21] As the next step in her work,Cabrera paid particular attention to an underrepresented group of ethnically diverse low-income families. In her studies,she argued that positive father-child interactions appeared to obviate potential cognitive delays associated with poverty. [23] She claimed that fathers' socio-economic characteristics were uniquely associated with child developmental outcomes and highlighted how fathers' contributions in childcare should not be ignored. [24]
Cabrera's work provides empirical evidence for the significant effect of father engagement on cognitive, [25] emotional, [25] social, [26] and language [27] development of children. She has argued that the quality of fathers' child-directed speech has a substantial contribution to children's receptive and expressive vocabulary skills. [28] In addition,she has concluded that father-child relationship quality has the direct impact on children's peer-relationships and behavioral problems. [26] Her co-authored article Explaining the long reach of fathers’prenatal involvement on later paternal engagement with children [29] was named Best Research Article regarding men in families by the National Council and Family Relations in 2009. [30] In this article,Cabrera's team outlined important findings that unmarried fathers’prenatal involvement was associated with their levels of paternal engagement when their child was one and three years of age.
In another paper Fathers Are Parents,Too! Widening the Lens on Parenting for Children's Development, [31] Cabrera and her colleagues provided a summary of the direct and indirect impact of fathers' involvement on child development. In this article,the authors discussed several issues related to father-child interaction and presented recommendations that can help further research to advance understanding of the role of fathering in a child's life.
Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why humans grow,change,and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children,the field has expanded to include adolescence,adult development,aging,and the entire lifespan. Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking,feeling,and behaviors change throughout life. This field examines change across three major dimensions,which are physical development,cognitive development,and social emotional development. Within these three dimensions are a broad range of topics including motor skills,executive functions,moral understanding,language acquisition,social change,personality,emotional development,self-concept,and identity formation.
Parenting or child rearing promotes and supports the physical,emotional,social,spiritual and cognitive development of a child from infancy to adulthood. Parenting refers to the intricacies of raising a child and not exclusively for a biological relationship.
Conduct disorder (CD) is a mental disorder diagnosed in childhood or adolescence that presents itself through a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior that includes theft,lies,physical violence that may lead to destruction,and reckless breaking of rules,in which the basic rights of others or major age-appropriate norms are violated. These behaviors are often referred to as "antisocial behaviors." It is often seen as the precursor to antisocial personality disorder,which by definition cannot be diagnosed until the individual is 18 years old. Conduct disorder may result from parental rejection and neglect and can be treated with family therapy,as well as behavioral modifications and pharmacotherapy. Conduct disorder is estimated to affect 51.1 million people globally as of 2013.
Baby sign language is the use of manual signing allowing infants and toddlers to communicate emotions,desires,and objects prior to spoken language development. With guidance and encouragement signing develops from a natural stage in infant development known as gesture. These gestures are taught in conjunction with speech to hearing children,and are not the same as a sign language. Some common benefits that have been found through the use of baby sign programs include an increased parent-child bond and communication,decreased frustration,and improved self-esteem for both the parent and child. Researchers have found that baby sign neither benefits nor harms the language development of infants. Promotional products and ease of information access have increased the attention that baby sign receives,making it pertinent that caregivers become educated before making the decision to use baby sign.
The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) is one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States Department of Health and Human Services. It supports and conducts research aimed at improving the health of children,adults,families,and communities,including:
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing,conceptual resources,perceptual skill,language learning,and other aspects of the developed adult brain and cognitive psychology. Qualitative differences between how a child processes their waking experience and how an adult processes their waking experience are acknowledged. Cognitive development is defined as the emergence of the ability to consciously cognize,understand,and articulate their understanding in adult terms. Cognitive development is how a person perceives,thinks,and gains understanding of their world through the relations of genetic and learning factors. There are four stages to cognitive information development. They are,reasoning,intelligence,language,and memory. These stages start when the baby is about 18 months old,they play with toys,listen to their parents speak,they watch tv,anything that catches their attention helps build their cognitive development.
Prenatal development includes the development of the embryo and of the fetus during a viviparous animal's gestation. Prenatal development starts with fertilization,in the germinal stage of embryonic development,and continues in fetal development until birth.
Ecological systems theory is a broad term used to capture the theoretical contributions of developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner. Bronfenbrenner developed the foundations of the theory throughout his career,published a major statement of the theory in American Psychologist,articulated it in a series of propositions and hypotheses in his most cited book,The Ecology of Human Development and further developing it in The Bioecological Model of Human Development and later writings. A primary contribution of ecological systems theory was to systemically examine contextual variability in development processes. As the theory evolved,it placed increasing emphasis on the role of the developing person as an active agent in development and on understanding developmental process rather than "social addresses" as explanatory mechanisms.
Child development involves the biological,psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the conclusion of adolescence.
The differential susceptibility theory proposed by Jay Belsky is another interpretation of psychological findings that are usually discussed according to the diathesis-stress model. Both models suggest that people's development and emotional affect are differentially affected by experiences or qualities of the environment. Where the Diathesis-stress model suggests a group that is sensitive to negative environments only,the differential susceptibility hypothesis suggests a group that is sensitive to both negative and positive environments. A third model,the vantage-sensitivity model,suggests a group that is sensitive to positive environments only. All three models may be considered complementary,and have been combined into a general environmental sensitivity framework.
Child displacement is the complete removal or separation of children from their parents and immediate family or settings in which they have initially been reared. Displaced children includes varying categories of children who experience separation from their families and social settings due to several varied reasons. These populations include children separated from their parents,refugees,children sent to boarding schools,internally displaced persons or IDPs,and asylum seekers. Thus child displacement refers to a broad range of factors due to which children are removed from their parents and social setting. This include persecution,war,armed conflict and disruption and separation for varied reasons.
Studies have found that the father is a child's preferred attachment figure in approximately 5–20% of cases. Fathers and mothers may react differently to the same behaviour in an infant,and the infant may react to the parents' behaviour differently depending on which parent performs it.
Role-taking theory is the social-psychological concept that one of the most important factors in facilitating social cognition in children is the growing ability to understand others’feelings and perspectives,an ability that emerges as a result of general cognitive growth. Part of this process requires that children come to realize that others’views may differ from their own. Role-taking ability involves understanding the cognitive and affective aspects of another person's point of view,and differs from perceptual perspective taking,which is the ability to recognize another person's visual point of view of the environment. Furthermore,albeit some mixed evidence on the issue,role taking and perceptual perspective taking seem to be functionally and developmentally independent of each other.
K. Alison Clarke-Stewart was a developmental psychologist and expert on children's social development. She is well known for her work on the effects of child care on children's development,and for her research on children's suggestibility. She has written over 100 articles for scholarly journals and co-authored several leading textbooks in the field.
Sandra L. Hofferth is a Professor,the Department of Family Science,University of Maryland School of Public Health in the United States,and Director,Maternal and Child Health Bureau. She is the former co-director of the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics and founding Director of its Child Development Supplement. Her research focuses on American children's use of time;poverty,food insecurity,public assistance,and child health and development;and fathers and fathering. Hofferth is the author of more than 100 articles and five books. Dr. Hofferth studies employment and parenting among women and most recently has extended this interest to men. Her current research focuses on the transition of young men to adulthood,particularly disadvantaged young men. Her papers have examined the link between the timing of childbirth and relationship outcomes for young men,factors influencing the transition of young men into residential and nonresidential fatherhood,the consequences of children for young men's relationships,and how young men's and their partner's employment experiences affect their relationships with children.
Catherine Tamis-LeMonda is a developmental psychologist and professor of applied psychology at New York University (NYU). She is an expert on parenting practices and the influence of parent-child social interaction on language,cognitive,and social development. She has co-edited numerous volumes on parenting and early child development including the Handbook of Father Involvement:Multidisciplinary Perspectives and Child Psychology:A Handbook of Contemporary Issues and Gender Roles in Immigrant Families.
Nancy Eisenberg is a psychologist and professor at Arizona State University. She was the President of the Western Psychological Association in 2014-2015 and the Division 7 president of the American Psychological Association in 2010-2012. Her research focuses on areas of emotional and social development of children. She is also in charge of a research lab at Arizona State University where undergraduate researchers help in longitudinal studies of social and emotional development in children and young adolescents.
Margaret R. Burchinal is a quantitative psychologist and statistician known for her research on child care. She is senior research scientist and director of the Data Management and Analysis Center of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Leonard Abbeduto is a psychologist known for his research on individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders,including Fragile X syndrome,autism spectrum disorder,and Down syndrome,and factors that influence their linguistic development over the lifespan. He is the Tsakopoulos-Vismara Endowed Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at University of California,Davis. He serves as Director of Research at the Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopment Disorders (MIND) Institute,which was launched in 2001. Prior to his affiliation with the University of California,Davis,Abbeduto was the Associate Director for Behavioral Sciences at the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Deborah Lowe Vandell is a developmental psychologist and an expert on the impact of early child care on children's developmental trajectories and the benefits of children's participation in afterschool programs and other organized activities. She is the Founding Dean of the University of California,Irvine School of Education and Chancellor Professor of Education and Psychology.