Kimberly Noble, Professor of Neuroscience & Education, will receive the 2021 Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest Award (Senior Career) from the American Psychological Association (APA). Noble, Director of Teachers College’s Neurocognition, Early Experience and Development (NEED) Lab, will accept the award and deliver an address at the organization’s annual convention in August.

In a current study co-directed by Noble — a five-year, $20 million undertaking — new mothers are being given cash payments to see whether supplemented income fosters the growth of their babies’ brains and cognitive abilities. The eventual findings hold potentially dramatic implications for social policy.

Noble, who is both a neuroscientist and a pediatrician, examines disparities in development and health across infancy, childhood and adolescence. She currently co-directs the Baby’s First Years study, the first clinical trial of poverty reduction to assess the causal impact of income on children’s cognitive, emotional and brain development in the first three years of life. Past research by Noble found that family income is associated with children’s brain structure and that the correlation is strongest among children from lower-income families. In the current study — a multi-year, $20 million undertaking — new mothers are being given cash payments to see whether supplemented income fosters the growth of their babies’ brains and cognitive abilities. The eventual findings hold potentially dramatic implications for social policy.

Noble is a past recipient of the Association for Psychological Science Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions.

[Watch a TED Talk by Noble about the Baby’s First Years study. Read stories on both the TC website and in The Economist about the launch of the study.]