Our Research
What do we study?
We are interested in understanding the development of infants and children’s early personality or temperament. Using twins, we are able to explore the extent to which children’s temperament is influenced by their genes and the environments that they experience. We are also interested in links between child temperament and other aspects of child behavior, such as behavior problems, imitation, language development, problem-solving abilities, and prosocial behavior. We have had over 600 twin pairs come to our lab when they were 2 and 3 years old, and an additional 300 twin pairs seen at ages 3, 4, and 5 years. Our current study focus on the lexical processing speed and links between child temperament and maternal linguistic input. Our research is funded by the National Institutes of Health.
