Child Development and Behavior Branch (CDBB) | NICHD
Baby and Toddler Health

Child Development and Behavior Branch (CDBB) | NICHD

May 22, 2025
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Baby playing with toys

Overview/Mission

CDBB supports basic and translational research and training that addresses the typical neurocognitive, psychological, behavioral, physical, and social-emotional development and health of infants, children, and adolescents. The branch explores how individual differences in development, as well as family and other social relationships, are affected by genetic and environmental influences including emerging societal trends (e.g., increased reliance on technology and digital media), as well as public health emergencies (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic). The branch also supports basic research to identify the mechanisms by which atypical development and related health outcomes in children and adolescents, including those with learning disabilities, arise from or are differentially affected by genetic and environmental risk/protective factors. The branch uses these findings to inform translational prevention, intervention, and health promotion studies designed to enhance their lives.


  • Pediatric Primary Care, Behavioral Pediatrics, and Health Promotion: Focuses on relationships between behaviors and clinically important health outcomes, such as the establishment and maintenance of healthy behaviors and identification and reduction of risky behaviors from childhood through early adulthood
  • Neurodevelopment, Cognition, and Behavior: Supports basic research on the developmental pathways leading to typical and atypical cognitive and brain development and developmental mechanisms underlying cognition and behavior at the molecular, genetic, cellular, and brain structural and functional levels
  • Early Learning and School Readiness: Supports basic and translational developmental research to specify the experiences that prepare children for a successful transition to school entry and later achievement and long-term follow-up to quantify the long-term effect of early intervention programs
  • Language Development and Multilinguilism: Includes research in language development and psycholinguistics throughout the lifespan, including bilingualism/multilingualism and/or second-language acquisition
    • Tackling Acquisition of Language in Kids (TALK) Initiative: An NIH-wide initiative that supports activities to better understand early language development and the learning trajectories and needs of late-talking children. TALK will expand the study of language development to a broader range of populations and identify potential risk factors for late talking.
  • Mathematics and Science Cognition, Reasoning, and Learning: Development and Disorders: Supports projects in basic and intervention research within all aspects of mathematical thinking and problem solving, as well as in scientific reasoning, learning, and discovery, across all ages from infancy into early adulthood
  • Literacy and Related Learning Disabilities: Focuses on research and training initiatives to increase understanding of both normal and atypical development of reading and written language skills. This includes development of prevention, remediation, and instructional approaches to enhance these abilities
  • Social and Emotional Development/Child and Family Processes: Supports research and research training relevant to normative social, emotional, and personality development in children, from the newborn period through adolescence. This includes studies of family processes, child maltreatment, exposure to violence, and human-animal interaction


  • Databrary external link: Open data library of developmental science video, audio, and related metadata
  • NIH Toolbox: Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function external link: Comprehensive set of neuro-behavioral measurements that quickly assess cognitive, emotional, sensory, and motor functions
  • Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) external link: Set of person-centered measures that evaluates and monitors physical, mental, and social health in adults and children
  • Cincinnati Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Neurodevelopment (C-Mind) Project external link: Standardized methods for recruiting, scanning, and processing brain imaging data from children from birth through adolescence
  • Neurodevelopmental MRI Database external link: Includes MRI average templates for different age segments
  • NIH Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Normal Brain Development external link: A Pediatric MRI Data Repository: Dataset for a longitudinal MRI-based neuroimaging study of more than 550 healthy, psychiatrically normal children and adolescents, ages newborn to 18 years


  • James A. Griffin, Branch Chief
    Main Research Areas: Executive function; typical development, atypical development, measurement, and interventions; school readiness (includes short- and long-term outcome studies and economic studies of lifespan cost savings); and primary care and child care parent and child interventions
  • Melissa Y. Delgado, Ph.D., American Association for the Advancement of Science/Society for Research in Child Development Policy Fellow
  • Layla Esposito, Program Director
    Main Research Areas: Social and emotional development and child and family processes, human-animal interaction
  • Courtney L. Gallen, Program Director
    Main Research Areas: Technology and digital media; cognitive neuroscience; assessment and intervention; typical development and atypical development
  • Tracy King, Medical Officer
    Main Research Areas: General pediatrics/pediatric primary care; developmental and behavioral pediatrics; transition from pediatric to adult health care
  • Laura Machlin, Program Director
    Main Research Areas: Neurobiological mechanisms; genetic and environmental influences on cognition and behavior; sensitive periods; structural and functional neuroimaging
  • Kathy Mann Koepke, Program Director
    Main Research Areas: Mathematics cognition, reasoning, learning, development, and disorders; reasoning, including animal models and human learning, transfer, typical development, and dysfunction; science learning, including animal models and human cognition, reasoning, learning, typical development, interventions, and disorders
  • Brett Miller, Program Director
    Main Research Areas: Reading, writing, and related learning disabilities; dyslexia/reading disability
  • Parisa Parsafar, Ph.D., Program Officer
  • Virginia C. Salo, Program Director
    Main Research Areas: Language development throughout the lifespan; preverbal communication; multilingualism and/or second-language acquisition

Highlights

  • CDBB leads NICHD support of research to address the short- and long-term effects of technology and digital media (TDM) in infants, children, and adolescents. Visit the TDM in Childhood and Adolescence page to learn more about this effort and access information and recordings from previous workshops and a fact sheet on digital media and children’s health.
  • Maternal Mental Wellness and Women’s Health. Learn about NICHD research efforts related to maternal mental health, including depression and anxiety during and up to 1 year after pregnancy.
  • CDBB leads and participates in NICHD’s activities related to COVID-19.
  • Safe Return to School For All  summarizes current evidence and best practices to help administrators, educators, and families and students—including students with disabilities—return to school safely in the context of COVID-19. The information provided is based on collaborative research from the NICHD-funded Washington University Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, the University of Missouri-Kansas City Institute of Human Development, and the Kennedy Krieger Institute (Maryland), in collaboration with the Special School District of St. Louis County, Missouri.
  • The Executive Summary (PDF 437 KB) of the “Media Exposure and Early Child Development” workshop is now available.
  • Branch-funded research was featured in the National Advisory Child Health and Human Development Council on June 7, 2018.
  • Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice  : CDBB co-sponsored this stakeholder workshop at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. A report, toolkit, and public service announcement-style video are available.
  • Systems Approaches to the U.S. Childhood Obesity Epidemic: This panel discussion is part of the Advances in Child Development and Behavior
    Research Speaker Series, sponsored by CDBB.

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