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Mary K. Rothbart | |
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| Born | May 22, 1940 Lewistown, Montana |
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Mary Klevjord Rothbart (born May 22, 1940 in Lewistown, Montana) is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Oregon. She is known for her research in the fields of Temperament and Social Development, Emotional Development, and Development of Attention. She has founded Birth to Three which is a parent support and education program. She has written over 159 articles related to Educational Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience and Biological Psychology. Dr. Rothbart has also authored and co-authored many books including Becoming Who We Are for which she received the Eleanor Maccoby Book Award from the American Psychological Association. Two other popular volumes by Rothbart are Temperament, a Handbook of Child Psychology, and Attention in Early Development: Themes and Variations.
Biography
editDr. Rothbart earned her B.A in Psychology (1962) from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She went on to earn her Ph.D in Psychology (1966) from Stanford University. Rothbart worked closely with developmental psychologist Eleanor Maccoby who served as her major advisor and mentor while she attended Stanford University. She has dedicated most of her work to the study of child development and temperament.
Rothbart retired as a Professor Emerita of Psychology from the University of Oregon. Although retired, Rothbart continues to assist her peers including Dr. Michael Posner in her field of expertise. Rothbart continues to focus on Educational and Developmental Psychology.
Dr. Rothbart is a leading expert in infant temperament development and has authored many articles and books on this subject. She drew generalizations about the development of temperament in small children by identifying emotional reactions. Her methods of assessing infant temperament would evolve into the infant Behavior Questionnaire, developed in 1981 and still widely used today.[1]
Other Major Awards
editBirth to Three's Champion of Children Award (Birth to Three)
Block Award (SPSP) award for research accomplishment in personality research
Research
editRothbart is well known for her research on individual differences in temperament, using methods ranging from questionnaires to laboratory observations. Rothbart developed parent- and self-report questionnaires for assessing temperament in infancy, childhood, early adolescence, and adulthood. She has also developed standardized laboratory assessments of temperament, and has conducted extensive laboratory work on the early development of the emotions, impulsivity, activity, and attention.
Rothbart became interested in this field after observing her two young sons and their behaviors.
She had looked into what research was available on child temperament at the time and there was not much work beyond an early study by Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess (New York Longitudinal Study). She would go on to spend countless hours interviewing and observing children and their emotional responses to outside stimuli in the process of developing the Infant Behavior Questionnaire in to define temperament in small children. In her work, she drew distinctions between "effortless control" used to inhibit a dominant response in order to perform a subdominant response and "effortful control" consisting of abilities required to voluntarily manage attention regulation. This work examined the development of control behaviors needed to adapt to situations and suppress impulsivity, especially when the child did not particularly want to do so.
Rothbart conducted important research with Doug Derryberry to observe the emotional reactions and the different temperaments of children between the ages of three to eight. Another important collaboration involved psychologist Michael Posner, and resulted in a number of seminal papers on development of self-regulation, as well as publication of the book Educating the Human Brain.