Childhood and adolescence are characterized by heightened neural plasticity—the brain’s ability to change in response to experience. This plasticity brings both opportunity and risk to the developing brain. On the one hand, plasticity facilitates learning and allows children to be highly adaptable to their environment. On the other hand, this heightened plasticity can also have costs for children who encounter adversity—including consequences for academic achievement, socioemotional development, and mental health. Research in the Mind in Development (MIND) Lab at Smith College focuses on how the brain develops to support complex cognitive functions like attention and memory, and how early life adversity alters neurocognitive development in ways that contribute to difficulties in school and mental health problems. We use tools in cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology to uncover how aspects of a child’s environment—especially those associated with socioeconomic status, such as cognitive stimulation and exposure to violence—influence cognitive, socioemotional, and neural development from preschool to adolescence.
The MIND lab has three specific branches of our research: 1) how the developing brain supports higher-order cognitive functions, such as attention, memory, and executive function; 2) the environmental, cognitive, and neural mechanisms that explain socioeconomic disparities in academic achievement; and 3) and factors that promote resilience and adaptive functioning among children who have experienced adversity.