People

Stephanie M. Carlson is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, the #1-ranked department for developmental psychology (U.S. News & World Report). She received a BA (summa cum laude) with Honors in Psychology from Bucknell University (1991) and a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oregon (1997). After a McDonnell-Pew postdoctoral fellowship in developmental cognitive neuroscience, Dr. Carlson became an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington (1998-2007). She has been at the University of Minnesota since 2007, and was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2013.

Dr. Carlson is an internationally recognized leader in the study of executive function (brain basis of self-control). She has developed innovative ways of measuring executive function in very young children and made discoveries about the role of executive function in other important aspects of human development (decision-making, perspective-taking, and creativity). Dr. Carlson’s current research focuses on the developmental antecedents of executive function skills in toddlers, relations between executive function and academic achievement, and ways to help promote executive function through caregiving practices and preschool curricula. Her work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Institute of Education Sciences, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, John Templeton Foundation, and the Character Lab. She also has conducted cross-cultural research in North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, and has been a Guest Professor of Southwest Normal University in Chongqing (2006-2009) and Zhejiang Normal University in Hangzhou, China (2013-2016).

Dr. Carlson is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. She has served on several editorial boards, as Vice President of the Jean Piaget Society, and as a member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group (University of Chicago) and the Frontiers of Innovation Pre-K Standards and Assessments Working Group (Harvard Center on the Developing Child and the National Governors’ Association). She has been an advisor to Transforming Education, the Minnesota Children’s Museum, and Sesame Workshop, and currently advises Playworks Minnesota, Understood.org, Noggin, and Bright Horizons Family Solutions. She has been nominated as a “Favorite Professor” by undergraduates and is frequently invited to speak at national and international meetings.

Dr. Carlson’s complete list of citations can be found here.