Congratulations to Stuit Professor Grazyna Kochanska on being one of two University of Iowa faculty members who were named a 2022 fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general-scientific society and publisher of the journal, Science.

"Kochanska was selected for “distinguished contributions to the field of developmental psychology, particularly for elucidating origins, course, mechanisms, and outcomes of young children’s adaptive and maladaptive social-emotional trajectories, using rigorous behavioral methodologies.”

Kochanska’s lab, established at Iowa in 1991, seeks to understand why children embark on very different life paths as they progress from infancy to adolescence. Some children are willingly cooperative and move toward increasingly well-regulated behavior, compatible with social rules. Other children embark on more troubling paths, tending to oppose their parents, disregard rules, and engage in a variety of disruptive behaviors. Kochanska’s work has highlighted biological and environmental factors that influence those paths, and it has informed evidence-based interventions that may promote positive, adaptive development.

Kochanska’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for more than 30 years.

“I am so grateful for the supportive colleagues and staff in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and for my research team, which has included many generations of post-doctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students, and professional staff,” she says. “I also am very appreciative of the countless Iowa families—mothers, fathers, and children—who have participated in many long-term research studies.”