Award for brain development research

The late Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith and husband Professor Mark Johnson (Birkbeck University) have been jointly awarded the William Thierry Preyer Award. The European Association of Developmental Psychology recognised their work at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development (CBCD) at Birkbeck.

Co-Director of the CBCD, Johnson, who will take up the post of Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge this month, has researched the functional development of the brain in the first years of life with particular focus on how cognitive functions emerge within certain regions. Karmiloff-Smith's research showed that models used in adult neuropsychology were inappropriate for looking at neurodevelopmental problems in children and, instead, focused on tracing cognitive outcomes back to their basic-level origins in infancy.