Our lab, the Infant-Child Study Center, has been examining: 

• the development of core aspects of cognition -- attention, memory, speed of processing, and representational competence - from infancy to adolescence
• the relation of infant abilities to later ones-- executive functioning, intelligence (IQ), language
• the nature and emergence of specific cognitive difficulties in preterms and their persistence over age.

    This work builds on earlier studies which showed that cognitive abilities could be measured in infancy and that infants born prematurely show deficits in many of these abilities. This work has been instrumental in establishing the notion that infant abilities, even in the first year of life, predict cognitive performance through early adolescence. Such findings have enormous theoretical importance for identifying the roots of later cognition and practical importance for the early identification of cognitive risk.  

     Having established that abilities from the first year of life represent the building blocks of later cognition, we are now charting the pathways that link them. We are finding a cognitive cascade in which abilities already evident in from the first year elementary infant abilities (speed and attention) influence more complex ones (memory and representational competence), which in turn influence later IQ. We are also finding that preterm deficits in later IQ can be accounted for by information processing deficits evident as early as 7-months of age.

Rose, S.A., Feldman, J.F., & Jankowski, J.J. Processing speed in the first year of life: A Longitudinal study of preterms and full-terms. Developmental Psychology, 2002, 38, 895-902. 

Rose, S.A., Feldman, J.F., & Jankowski, J.J. Infant visual recognition memory: Independent contributions of speed and attention. Developmental Psychology, 2003, 39, 563-571.

Rose, S. A.  The building blocks of cognition. Journal of Pediatrics, 2003, 143, S54-S61.

Rose, S.A., Feldman, J.F., & Jankowski, J.J. Infant visual recognition memory. Developmental Review, 2004, 24, 74-100. (Invited paper for Special Issue)

Rose, S.A., Feldman, J.F., & Jankowski, J.J. Dimensions of cognition in infancy. Intelligence, 2004, 32, 245-262.

Rose, S.A., Feldman, J.F., & Jankowski, J.J. The structure of infant cognition at 1year. Intelligence, 2005, 33, 231-250.

Rose, S.A., Feldman, J.F., & Jankowski, J.J. Recall memory in the first three years of life: A longitudinal study of preterms and full-terms. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 2005, 47, 653-659.

Rose, S.A., Feldman, J.F., & Jankowski, J.J. Pathways from prematurity and infant abilities to later cognition. Child Development, 2005, 76, 1172-1184.