Dana McCoy: Defining, Measuring, and Improving Self-Regulation in Early Childhood

In an increasingly complex and stimulating world, how do children learn to control their impulses and avoid distraction? Using evidence from neuroscience, developmental psychology, and education, this talk will explore the importance of self-regulation and executive function as core skills to be developed in the preschool period. In particular, we will consider what it means to be "well regulated," how we can measure this abstract construct in real-world settings, and what environmental and biological factors might improve -- or inhibit -- children's odds of achieving self-regulatory success.

Dana Charles McCoy is an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her work focuses on understanding the ways that poverty-related risk factors in children's home, school, and neighborhood environments affect the development of their cognitive and socioemotional skills in early childhood. She is also interested in the development, refinement, and evaluation of early intervention programs designed to promote positive development and resilience in young children, particularly in terms of their self-regulation and executive function. Dr. McCoy's work is centered in both domestic and international contexts, including Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia, Brazil, and Jordan. She has a particular interest in interdisciplinary theory, causal methodology, and ecologically valid measurement. Before joining the HGSE faculty, Dr. McCoy served as an NICHD National Research Service Award post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, where she studied differential effectiveness of early childhood education programs (e.g., Head Start) across diverse communities in the United States. She graduated with an A.B. in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Dartmouth College and received her Ph.D. in Applied Psychology from New York University.

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