Public lecture features international child development expert Jay Belsky
<p>Arizona State University's New College of Arts and Sciences presents a public lecture featuring internationally acclaimed child development and family studies expert Jay Belsky. The lecture, "Evaluating the effectiveness of a community-based early intervention programme in England: A personal and political odyssey," begins at 3:30 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 17, in UCB 265-266, at ASU's West campus, 4701 W. Thunderbird Road, Phoenix.</p><separator></separator><p>Belsky, director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues at Birkbeck College, University of London, will discuss the effects of early child intervention programs on children's social, emotional and cognitive development. His areas of special expertise include the effects of day care, parent-child relations during the infancy and early childhood years, the transition to parenthood, the etiology of child and maltreatment. He is the author of more than 200 scientific articles and chapters, and the author of several books.</p><separator></separator><p>Among his other current projects is a multi-million dollar, multi-site investigation in the U.S. of the effects of early child care on children's development through the age of 11. Belsky has carried out several longitudinal studies focused upon the early years of the family life cycle, concentrating first on the first year of life and especially the interrelation of marriage, parenting and infant development, as well as the effects of day care and origins of attachment security, before moving on to carry out work on the so-called "terrible twos", the second and third years of life.</p><separator></separator><p>Belsky's work focuses on fathers as well as mothers, marriages as well as parent-child relations, and naturalistic home observations of family interaction patterns. His work has been funded in the U.S. by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the March of Dimes Foundation and the Sara Scaife Family Foundation.</p>