Developmental Division

Dr. Roisman's interests concern the legacy of early relationship experiences as an organizing force in social, cognitive, and biological development across the lifespan. As such, his program of research focuses on the childhood antecedents of adaptation within the developmentally salient contexts of adolescence and adulthood. This work is multi-method and multi-informant, employing self-report, observational, psychophysiological, and interview-based methods with individuals and couples. In spanning multiple levels of a developmental analysis of individual and dyadic trajectories, his laboratory's goal is to provide insight into the childhood experiences and resources that scaffold healthy adjustment in the years of maturity.

Dr. Roisman is currently pursuing this research agenda through (a) prospective investigations of the fate of early experience as a Co-PI on the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a longitudinal investigation of over 1,000 youth tracked from infancy to age 15 (a 17.5 year assessment is ongoing), (b) a programmatic set of observational laboratory analogue studies involving administering in-depth Adult Attachment Interviews to college students, stranger dyads, siblings, parents, and romantically involved couples (dating, engaged, married, gay male, and lesbian) about their childhood experiences, (c) experiments designed to better understand the ways in which interpersonal experiences are embodied in fMRI, electrophysiological, and autonomic activation, and (d) secondary analyses of large datasets that provide opportunities to demonstrate the utility of behavior-genetic, taxometric, and meta-analytic approaches for simultaneously resolving questions at the heart of social developmental theory while improving methodology in the study of the legacy of early experience.

Representative Publications:

• Roisman, G.I., Susman, E., Barnett-Walker, K., Booth-LaForce, C., Owen, M.T., Belsky, J., Bradley, R.H., Houts, R., Steinberg, L., & the NICHD Early Child Care Research Network (2009). Early family and child-care antecedents of awakening cortisol levels in adolescence. Child Development, 80(3), 907-920.
• Groh, A.M., & Roisman, G.I. (2009). Adults' autonomic and subjective responses to infant vocalizations: The role of secure base script knowledge. Developmental Psychology, 45(3), 889-893.
• Roisman, G.I. (2009). Adult attachment: Toward a rapprochement of methodological cultures. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(2), 122-126.
• Roisman, G.I., Clausell, E., Holland, A., Fortuna, K., & Elieff, C. (2008). Adult romantic relationships as contexts of human development: A multi-method comparison of same-sex couples with opposite-sex dating, engaged, and married dyads. Developmental Psychology, 44(1), 91-101.
• Roisman, G.I., & Fraley, R.C. (2008). A behavior-genetic study of parenting quality, infant attachment security, and their covariation in a nationally representative sample. Developmental Psychology, 44(3), 831-839.

Classes Recently Taught:

• Child Psychology (Psych 216)
• Development and Interpersonal Relationships (Psych 326)