Daphne Maurer facts for kids

Daphne Maurer OC FRSC is a Canadian scientist who studies how people grow and change. She is a retired professor from the Psychology department at McMaster University. Professor Maurer is famous for her research on how babies and children learn to see.

Early Life and Education

Daphne Maurer went to college and earned several degrees. She studied psychology at Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania. Later, she earned her PhD in child development from the University of Minnesota.

Research and Discoveries

Professor Maurer's Visual Development Lab at McMaster University studies how our vision develops. Her team also looks into synaesthesia, which is when your senses mix, like seeing colors when you hear music. She has written over 200 scientific papers for important journals like Nature and Science. Her work has greatly changed how we understand how babies see the world.

Helping People See Better

Even though much of her research is basic science, it has helped people in real life. For example, her work has improved treatments for babies born with cataracts, which are cloudy spots in the eye. She also showed that playing certain video games can help adults with amblyopia, sometimes called "lazy eye."

Professor Maurer also studied how well vision screening works for young children in Ontario, Canada. Her research helped the province start checking the vision of all senior kindergarten students. This program began in the 2018–2019 school year.

Books by Daphne Maurer

In 1988, Daphne Maurer and her husband, Charles Maurer, wrote a book called The World of the Newborn. This book explores how newborn babies develop from their own point of view. A review in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology called it a "landmark book" that offered a fresh look at the subject. The New York Times said it helped readers understand the baby's senses. This book won an award from the American Psychological Association and was translated into five languages.

In 2019, she and her husband published another book, Pretty Ugly: Why we like some songs, faces, foods, plays, pictures, poems, etc., and dislike others. This book combines science with the history of art to explain why people (and even some animals) have favorite things.

Professor Maurer has also shared her knowledge about child development, vision, and synaesthesia with many news outlets, including The New York Times and New Scientist. She is also very interested in research ethics and spent seven years on Canada's national Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics.

Awards and Honors

Daphne Maurer has received many awards for her important work. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, which is a high honor for Canadian scholars. She is also a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 2015, she received the Donald O. Hebb Distinguished Contribution Award from the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science. McMaster University honored her with the title Distinguished University Professor in 2011 and an honorary degree in 2017.

In 2024, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. This is one of the highest honors a Canadian citizen can receive.

Publications

• Maurer, D., & Salapatek, P. (1976). How young babies scan faces as they grow. Child Development, 47(2), 523–527.
• Maurer, D., & Barrera, M. (1981). How babies see normal and changed faces. Child Development, 52(1), 196–202.
• Maurer, D., & Maurer, C. The World of the Newborn. New York: Basic Books, 1988.
• Maurer, D., Le Grand, R., & Mondloch, C. J. (2002). The many ways we process faces. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(6), 255–260.
• Lewis, T. L., & Maurer, D. (2005). Important times for human vision development: What we learned from children who couldn't see well. Developmental Psychobiology, 46(3), 163–183.
• Maurer, D., Pathman, T., & Mondloch, C. J. (2006). The shape of boubas: How sounds and shapes match for toddlers and adults. Developmental Science, 9(3), 316–322.
• Mondloch, C. J., Maurer, D., & Ahola, S. (2006). Becoming an expert at recognizing faces. Psychological Science, 17(11), 930–934.
• Maurer, C., & Maurer, D. Pretty Ugly: Why we like some songs, faces, foods, plays, pictures, poems, etc., and dislike others. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.