Mary K. Rothbart

Rothbart was born in Lewistown, Montana, in May 1940 to Mary Louise Klevjord.[1] Her father, who came from Norway, was a teacher and her mother was a housewife. Rothbart was the oldest of four daughters. Though born in Montana, Rothbart's father joined the military during World War II, which resulted in most of her early years living in Utah and Washington.[1] After attending high school in Utah, she then enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. This is where her love of learning was sparked and where she met her husband Myron Rothbart, also a social psychologist. After graduating, both Rothbarts went to Stanford, where she graduated with a doctoral degree in social psychology.[1] While at Stanford Rothbart gave birth to her first son, then 20 months later gave birth to her second son. Her second son was born in Montreal, where Rothbart's husband was working. During her son's early years, she took three years off to stay at home with them, which led her to research development and temperament of children. She had looked into what research was available on child temperament at the time and there was not much work beyond an early study by Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess (New York Longitudinal Study). She would go on to spend countless hours interviewing and observing children and their emotional responses to outside stimuli in the process of developing the Infant Behavior Questionnaire in to define temperament in small children. Rothbart then accepted a teaching position from the University of Oregon, where she spent the rest of her teaching and research career. She is now retired from her teaching career, but continues to conduct research.[1]

Rothbart earned her B.A in Psychology (1962) from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She went on to earn her Ph.D in Psychology (1966) from Stanford University. Rothbart worked closely with developmental psychologist Eleanor Maccoby who served as her major advisor and mentor while she attended Stanford University. She has dedicated most of her work to the study of child development and temperament.

After receiving her Ph.D., Rothbart became a faculty member at the University of Oregon, where she conducted research on the development of emotions and attention in early childhood and infancy. She is best known for her research with individual differences in infant temperament. Although her primary focus was on researching with infants, Rothbart also conducted research on temperament in early childhood all the way to adolescence. Rothbart has also conducted research on attention, the development of emotions, and social development.[2]

Rothbart retired as a Professor Emerita of Psychology from the University of Oregon. Although retired, Rothbart continues to assist her peers including Dr. Michael Posner in her field of expertise. Rothbart continues to focus on educational and developmental psychology.

Rothbart is a leading expert in infant temperament development and has authored many articles and books on this subject. She drew generalizations about the development of temperament in small children by identifying emotional reactions. Rothbart developed parent- and self-report questionnaires for assessing temperament in infancy, childhood, early adolescence, and adulthood. She has also developed standardized laboratory assessments of temperament, and has conducted extensive laboratory work on the early development of the emotions, impulsivity, activity, and attention. In her work, she drew distinctions between "effortless control" used to inhibit a dominant response in order to perform a subdominant response and "effortful control" consisting of abilities required to voluntarily manage attention regulation. This work examined the development of control behaviors needed to adapt to situations and suppress impulsivity, especially when the child did not particularly want to do so.

Her methods of assessing infant temperament would evolve into the infant Behavior Questionnaire, developed in 1981 and still widely used today.[3] This technique, called the Infant Behavior Questionnaire, is commonly used among researchers studying infant behavior and temperament today.[3]

Using this questionnaire in combination with home and laboratory observations has helped infant researchers obtain more accurate data on their participants. Rothbart also uses self-report surveys for her participants, but only when she is assessing participants who are old enough to give accurate self-report data.

Rothbart conducted important research with Doug Derryberry to observe the emotional reactions and the different temperaments of children between the ages of three to eight. Another important collaboration involved psychologist Michael Posner, and resulted in a number of seminal papers on development of self-regulation, as well as publication of the book Educating the Human Brain.

Dr. Rothbart has received several awards for her contributions in social and developmental psychology. In 2009, she received the Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Science of Psychology from the American Psychological Foundation.[8] She is also the recipient of the Block Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology, the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Child Development from the Society for Research in Child Development, and the G. Stanley Hall Award for Distinguished Contribution to Developmental Psychology from the American Psychological Association.[9]

Dr. Rothbart was also awarded the Elenor Maccoby Book Award from Division 7 (Developmental Psychology) of the American Psychological Association for her book Becoming Who We Are.[9] This book discusses the role of temperament in developing personality traits as well as biological and social influences on temperament. Becoming Who We Are combines theories on temperament with research that Rothbart and other leading temperament researchers have conducted in order to give more detail about temperament and its implications in later life. She also discusses intervention plans in order to help children who have a difficult temperament.[9]

• SRCD Oral History Interview - Mary K. Rothbart
• Mary K. Rothbart - CAS Department of Psychology
• Mary Rothbart's Temperament Questionnaires
• Mary K. Rothbart - Guildford Press