Ross A. Thompson Distinguished Professor of Psychology
Ross A. Thompson’s research focuses on the applications of
developmental research to public policy concerns, including
school readiness and its development, early childhood
investments, and early mental health.
He also studies early parent-child relationships, the
development of emotion understanding and emotion regulation,
conscience development, and the growth of self-understanding in
young children.
Thompson received the Ann Brown Award for Excellence in
Developmental Research in 2007, and the University of California,
Davis Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award in 2011. He is
a founding member of the National Scientific Council on the
Developing Child, and was a member of the National Academy of
Sciences committee that produced the report, From Neurons to
Neighborhoods (National Academy Press, 2000). He is a member of
the Board of Directors of Zero to Three, and the Scientific
Advisory Board of the National Institute for Early Education
Research.
His books include Preventing Child Maltreatment through Social
Support: A Critical Analysis (Sage, 1995), The Postdivorce
Family: Children, Families, and Society (coedited with Paul
Amato) (Sage, 1999), and Toward a Child-Centered,
Neighborhood-Based Child Protection System (coedited with Gary
Melton and Mark Small; Praeger, 2002).
Thompson received his degree in Psychology from the University of
Michigan in 1981.
Considerable evidence shows that low socioeconomic status (SES)
is associated with poorer physical health, emotional well-being,
and cognitive functioning for both children and adults. SES also
appears to be an important predictor of problem behaviors in
childhood and adolescence, such as delinquency, aggression,
conduct problems at school, and other externalizing behaviors.
Center for Poverty Research Director Marianne Page and
Faculty Affiliate Ross Thompson were invited to speak on a panel
at the Childhood Obesity Conference in Anaheim, CA
July 15-18. Their session entitled “Poverty: Obesity
Prevention’s Top Priority?” discussed how childhood obesity is
tied to so many other issues—poverty, family supports, and
healthy communities.
To grow up in poverty can have a lasting impact on a child. What
is less understood is how it affects the early relationships that
shape a child’s social and emotional growth.
Prior research by Thompson has shown that intergenerational
processes are important to understanding the problems of emotion
understanding for young children in families experiencing
economic stress. This project examines the influence of mother’s
demographic and emotional risk on the content of mother–child
conversations about emotion, as well as young children’s emotion
understanding.
In his lab by the freeway in Davis, Ross Thompson, a
developmental psychologist, pulls a plush monkey puppet onto each
hand and stands behind a cardboard “stage.” A red curtain hangs
across a cutout in the front.
“We would normally have animated voices and all the rest,” he
says. “If you do this in a way that is within the child’s
capabilities, you will find that they have a much richer sense of
themselves psychologically than we give them credit for.”
