Jerome Kagan (February 25, 1929 – May 10, 2021) was an American psychologist, who was the Daniel and Amy Starch Research Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, as well as, co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute.
[6] After his graduation from Rahway High School in 1946,[7] he chose to study psychology because he was attracted to being a scientist and he wanted to preserve his grandfather's interest in human nature.
[6] After that project was completed, he accepted the offer he received from Harvard University to be involved in creating the first human development program.
[6] Once the children were walking and could leave the home, Kagan found that the psychological delay in development was only temporary, suggesting that cognitive growth is malleable.
Schwartz et al. (2010) performed a longitudinal study involving eighteen-year-olds and used neuroimaging to detect whether or not the ventromedial or orbitofrontal cerebral cortex are associated with the high or low reactivity of what they demonstrated when four-months-old.
Results showed that the adults who had low-reactive infant temperaments had greater thickness in the left orbitofrontal cortex than the high-reactive group.
[6] Kagan's research found that there were major changes in psychological functioning between nineteen and twenty-four months, and that one-year-old children were sensitive to events that deviated from their normal experiences.
[10] Kagan also examined the effects of infant daycare in response to a congressional proposal to fund federal day care centers for working mothers.
[11] Focusing on cognitive functioning, language, attachment, separation protest, and play tempo, this research revealed very little difference between the infants in day care and those whose mothers stayed at home with them.
[12] He called for a moratorium on the use of single words (e.g. fear) to write about emotional processes, urging experts to use full sentences instead.
[19] The research hypothesized that the frequency of infant reactivity, based on motor and crying dimensions, is predictive of behavioral inhibition.