We are delighted to announce that Dr. Edward Tronick will be the keynote speaker at the IEDTA’s International Conference in Boston, MA, 26-28 September 2019.
Dr. Tronick is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and is the Director of its Child Development Unit (CDU). At the CDU, he conducts research on the the social-emotional development of infants, the effects of stress on infants and mothers, including mothers with depression and anxiety disorders. He is a Research Associate in the Department of Newborn Medicine at Harvard Medical School; a co-founder and former faculty member of the Brazelton Touchpoints Center, a founding member of the Boston Process of Change Group, and chief faculty of the Infant-Parent Mental Health Fellowship program. He is recipient of numerous awards, including most recently the Lifetime Achievement Award from Zero to Three. His research has been supported by numerous grants from the NIH and NSF.
In 1970, he worked with T. B. Brazelton on the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS); more recently, he collaborated with B. M. Lester on the NICU Network Neurobehavioral Exam. Dr. Tronick developed “The Still Face Paradigm,” considered a cornerstone of attachment theory. The Still-Face Paradigm investigates the natural human process of connection between infant and parent, and shows the profoundly negative effects on the infant of parental non-responsiveness. One of the most replicated findings in developmental psychology, it has become a standard method for testing hypotheses about individual differences in attachment style, as well as the effects of maternal depression on infants. Recent research on the Still-Face Paradigm has explored infants’ memory for it and its psychophysical stress effects, along with the effects of an experimental stress on maternal parenting.
The author of more than 200 scientific articles, Dr. Tronick has presented at US and international psychodynamic organizations and makes frequent expert appearances on national radio and television programs. His book, The Neurobehavioral and Social Emotional Development of Infants and Children, has been hailed as a “tour de force.”