How Children Develop

Robert Siegler is the Schiff Foundations Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. His research focuses on how children learn mathematics. He is author of the cognitive development textbook Children’s Thinking and has written or edited several additional books on child development. His books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, German, Spanish, French, Greek, Hebrew, and Portuguese. He has presented keynote addresses at the conventions of the Cognitive Development Society, the Japanese Psychological Association, the German Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the Conference on Human Development. He also has served as Associate Editor of the journal Developmental Psychology, co-edited the cognitive development volume of the 1998 and 2006 editions of the Handbook of Child Psychology, and served on the National Mathematics Advisory Panel from 2006 to 2008. Dr. Siegler received the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 2005, was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2010, was named Director of the Siegler Center for Innovative Learning at Beijing Normal University in 2012 and was elected to the Society of Experimental Psychologists in 2016.

Jenny R. Saffran is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor and College of Letters & Science Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and is an investigator at the Waisman Center. Her research is focused on learning in infancy and early childhood, with a particular emphasis on language. Dr. Saffran’s research has been continually funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for over 20 years. She has received numerous awards for her research and teaching, including the Boyd McCandless Award from the American Psychological Association for early career contributions to developmental psychology and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the National Science Foundation. In 2015, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Elizabeth Gershoff is the Amy Johnson McLaughlin Centennial Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences and Associate Director of the Population Research Center, both at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on how parental and school discipline affect child and youth development and on how parent education and early childhood education programs, such as the federal Head Start program, can improve the lives of at-risk children. Dr. Gershoff has been awarded numerous federal grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute for Mental Health, and the National Science Foundation to support her research. She was lead author of the volume Societal Contexts of Child Development, which won the 2014 Society for Research on Adolescence Social Policy Award for Best Edited Book, and of a new book, Ending the Physical Punishment of Children: A Guide for Clinicians and Practitioners. She was an Associate Editor at the journal Developmental Psychology and is President-Elect of the Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice, which is Division 37 of the American Psychological Association. She is an internationally recognized expert on the effects of physical punishment on children, and her research on the topic has been recognized with a Lifetime Legacy Achievement Award from the Center for the Human Rights of Children at Loyola University Chicago and the Nicholas Hobbs Award from Division 37 of the American Psychological Association.