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Karen E. Adolph is a psychologist and professor known for her research in the field of infant motor development. She is the recipient of the APA Boyd McCandless Award and American Psychological Foundation Robert L. Fantz Memorial Award. She has served as the President of the International Congress on Infant Studies[1]. Adolph and her colleagues developed computerized video coding software, called Datavyu, and state-of-the-art recording technology to observe and code behavior. A related project, Databrary, provides a repository for video recordings of behavior and encourages data sharing across research labs. Adolph is a recipient of a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development in support of her innovative research. [2]
Biography
editAdolph received a B.A., in Psychology and Fine Arts in 1986 from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. She went to graduate school at Emory University, in Atlanta GA where she attained her M.A. in Experimental/Developmental Psychology in 1989 and a Ph.D. in Experimental/Developmental Psychology in 1993. She worked under Eleanor J. Gibson, Esther Thelen, and Ulric Neisser. She is currently Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University (NYU) where she leads the Infant Action Lab at NYU, focusing on the study of behavioral flexibility in motor development.
Research
editAdolph's work examines how individuals learn to adapt to changes in their bodies and develop skills to handle variation in the environment. Although much of her work has focused on infant development, the Infant Action Lab also conducts studies with children and adults. One of their main research methodologies involves developing tasks that challenge infants, children, and adults with novel predicaments, such as crawling over bridges, squeezing through apertures, swinging over monkey bars, and reaching for targets with the body in motion.
Adolph has studied infant locomotion and coordination by using infant head-mounted eye-tracking cameras to examine infants' patterns of visual attention as they played in a toy filled room with their mothers.
Representative Publications
editAdolph, K. E. (2008). Learning to move. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(3), 213-218.
Adolph, K. E. (2000). Specificity of learning: Why infants fall over a veritable cliff. Psychological Science, 11(4), 290-295.