Adele Diamond facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Adele Diamond
FRSC
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Adele Dorothy Diamond
|
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | |
| Spouse(s) | Donald Druin |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Developmental cognitive neuroscience |
| Institutions | University of British Columbia |
| Thesis | Behavior changes between 6 to 12 months of age: what can they tell us about how the mind of the infant is changing? (1983) |
| Doctoral advisor | Jerome Kagan |
Adele Dorothy Diamond is a leading professor of neuroscience at the University of British Columbia. She holds a special position there as a Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. She is one of the first scientists to study how children's brains develop and think.
Professor Diamond's research focuses on how "executive functions" work. These are skills like paying attention, remembering things, and controlling our actions. She looks at how these skills are affected by our bodies and our surroundings, especially in kids. Her discoveries have helped improve treatments for conditions like phenylketonuria (PKU) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Her work has also had a big impact on how we teach young children.
Contents
Growing Up and School
Adele Diamond grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. She went to public schools there. She was the top student when she graduated from John Bowne High School.
She then attended Swarthmore College on a special scholarship. She graduated in 1975 with top honors, studying Sociology-Anthropology and Psychology. During her time at Swarthmore, she also studied at the London School of Economics in 1972.
Diamond continued her studies at Harvard University, where she earned her PhD in 1983. She received several fellowships, which are like scholarships that help pay for graduate school.
Changing Her Research Focus
Even though she was officially studying Psychology, Adele spent her first few years at Harvard focusing on anthropology and sociology. Her first idea for her PhD was about whether the need to control your own life is something everyone is born with or if it's a Western idea. She even planned to travel to the South Pacific for her research.
However, she realized her research plan wasn't working well. She didn't want to do poor science, so she decided to change her topic. She even returned the money she had received for her research trip!
She then went back to a question her professor, Jerome Kagan, had asked: If babies all over the world show similar thinking changes at the same age, it can't just be from learning. Their experiences are too different. There must be something in their brain development that causes these changes. To answer this, Diamond started studying neuroscience.
Studying the Brain
Adele Diamond believed that changes in a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex helped babies make big thinking leaps between 6 and 12 months old. At that time, no one in her department at Harvard was studying this. So, she taught herself from books. She also got permission for a brain expert, Nelson Butters, to join her thesis committee.
To get strong proof from the brain, Diamond went to Yale University School of Medicine. There, she worked with another famous scientist, Patricia Goldman-Rakic. This work helped her gather evidence for her ideas about brain development.
Important Discoveries
Adele Diamond helped bring together different types of scientists. She organized a conference that connected developmental psychologists, neuroscientists, and cognitive scientists. They were all studying similar things but didn't know it! This conference helped start many new research projects and the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience.
Helping Children with PKU
Her team made an important discovery about children with phenylketonuria (PKU). PKU is a rare genetic condition. They found that if children with PKU don't start a special low-phenylalanine diet within days of birth, they can have lasting vision problems. Before this, doctors thought starting the diet within two weeks was fine. This discovery changed how PKU is treated.
Understanding ADHD
In 2005, she wrote a paper about different types of ADHD. She showed that ADHD where kids are mostly inattentive (called "BADD" in her paper) is different from ADHD where kids are also hyperactive. This helped doctors understand and treat these conditions better.
New Ways to Learn
Much of Diamond's work starts with a simple idea: Even if a child seems unable to do something, they might succeed if you ask the question differently or teach the concept in a new way. She showed this with how babies understand objects. She also showed it with how children can learn abstract ideas. And she proved it with how kids can do tasks that need memory and self-control, like a Stroop-like test.
Awards and Honors
Adele Diamond has received many important awards for her work.
- In 2009, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. This is a high honor for Canadian scholars. She also received a YWCA Woman of Distinction Award.
- In 2014, she received the Urie Bronfenbrenner Award from the American Psychological Association. This award recognized her lifelong contributions to developmental psychology. She was also named one of the 15 most influential neuroscientists alive.
- In 2015, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel gave her an honorary doctorate.
- In 2019, her work was ranked among the top 0.01% of scientists for its impact.
- In 2024, she received an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree from the University of Cambridge in the UK.
- She has held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair for over ten years. This is a very important research position in Canada.
Teacher and Speaker
Professor Diamond is known for being an excellent teacher. Her courses have always received great reviews. She has given almost 600 invited talks around the world. These include many keynote speeches and special lectures. She has spoken in many countries, sharing her knowledge about brain development and learning.
Selected Publications
Adele Diamond has written or helped write about a hundred research papers. These papers share her discoveries with other scientists.
- Diamond, A. (1991). Neuropsychological insights into the meaning of object concept development. In S. Carey & R. Gelman (Eds.), The epigenesis of mind: Essays on biology and knowledge. (pp. 67–110). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Diamond, A. (2001). A model system for studying the role of dopamine in prefrontal cortex during early development in humans. In C. Nelson & M. Luciana (Eds.), Handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience. (pp. 433–472). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
