Dr. Cathi Proppper, an Adjunct Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology, received a $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) to study the link between poverty and developing cognitive processes that facilitate learning, self-monitoring and decision-making in children. Dr. Propper is an investigator at the UNC Center for Developmental Science. Co-principal investigators include Roger Mills-Koonce, Ph.D., CDS faculty and professor at the UNC School of Education; Sarah Short, Ph.D., of University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds; and Michael Willoughby, Ph.D., of the Research Triangle Institute.
The five-year study will be the first to investigate how poverty influences children’s cognitive development over the first two years of life. Findings will contribute critical information regarding whether specific measures of experience including language exposure, caregiver behavior and child sleep hygiene may ameliorate this risk.