Claire Vallotton

Associate Professor of Child Development Michigan State University

  • East Lansing MI

An expert in early childhood education and intervention; parent-child interaction and communication; early development of social skills

Contact

Michigan State University

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Media

Biography

Following her PhD in Human Development at the University of California, Davis, Dr. Claire D. Vallotton won a Clinical Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health to study as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. Vallotton has been awarded the New Investigator Award from the World Association of Infant Mental Health, the Award of Distinction for Young Alumni from the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis, and was named an Exceptional Emerging Leader in childcare research from ChildCare Exchange.

Vallotton studies early development of language and social-emotional skills, and how they it is shaped by relationships with parents and early child educators. She also studies the factors that influence those relationships and children’s development, including family risks, adult mental health, and culture. She has expertise in infant signing (caregiver-child preverbal communication through gestures), and uses infant signing to gain insight into infants’ internal worlds, and the effects of early communication skills on later development.
Vallotton uses her research to improve the quality of training for the early childcare and education workforce, and provide parents with effective tools support their children's development of social-emotional and communication skills. She has been involved in state-level initiatives on training the early care and education workforce, creating public awareness around children’s mental health, and establishing standards of practice to support infant/toddler language and emergent literacy skills. She serves as an expert advisor on infant, toddlers, and families to the US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Planning, Research, & Evaluation.

Areas of Expertise

Childcare
Infant Mental Health
Parenting
Early Childhood Education
Child Development
Language Development
Cultural Socialization

Accomplishments

Faculty Fellow, Strategies and Tools a cross Fields (STAF): Teaching with Writing

Writing Center, Michigan State University, May - August 2014

Lilly Teaching Fellow, "Using technology to enhance quantitative literacy and effective decision - making among ECE students"

Michigan State University, 2013 - 2014

Exceptional Emerging Leader 2015, Emerging Leaders in the Field of Early Care and Education

Child Care Exchange and Exchange Live, May, 2015

Education

Harvard Gradudate School of Education

NIH Postdoctoral Fellow

Education

2008

University of California

Ph.D.

Human Development

2004

Simpson College

B.A.

Psychology

1997

Affiliations

  • Member, Network of Infant Toddler Researchers, Office of Planning, Research, & Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families
  • Member, Home - Based Care Workgroup, Child Care Policy Research Consortium (CCPRC)
  • Member, Michigan Infant Toddler Research Exchange

News

Children with chores achieve better at school and at life

WLNS 6  online

2018-07-05

Nobody likes doing chores, but numerous studies show children who are given household duties are more responsible, have higher self-esteem, and can deal with frustration better. These three qualities help kids in both school and in society, plus get them practice for needed life skills later.

Child development expert, Claire Vallotton with MSU says, introducing household chores can start when toddlers began responding to direction. She believes many young kids show enthusiasm to help that parents can use to foster good habits as they grow older.

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Asking the right questions can enhance child development

WLNS 6  online

2018-04-05

Asking your kid the right questions can dramatically enhance childhood development. Child expert, Claire Vallotton with Michigan State University says, the science of early childhood development shows asking questions supports growth in a variety of ways, including social and emotional skills, getting to know themselves, cognitive functions, and language.

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Parallel Talking with Your Infant

WKAR  online

2018-01-30

Parallell Talking is a great tool in supporting a child’s language development and comprehension. Just like a sportscaster, parents narrate and talk about whatever a child is doing, seeing, eating, touching, or thinking.

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Research Grants

Trajectories of Teacher Stress: The Roles Coping and Prior Exposure to Trauma

NIH, NICHD

2017-2020
Co-Principal Investigator (PI: Brophy-Herb)

Recognizing, Reflecting, and Responding to Infant/Toddler Cues: An Integrated Parent-Teacher Intervention to Support Social-Emotional Development through Caregiver Mindfulness and Sensitivity

ACF-OPRE Early Head Start University Partnership

2015-2020
Principal Investigator, (PIs: Stacks, Muzik)

Journal Articles

Effects of maternal mentalization-related parenting on toddlers’ self-regulation

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

2018

Little research has examined associations between multiple indicators of parental mentalization and children's regulatory capacities. This study aimed (1) to examine the validity of a latent mentalization-related parenting construct and (2) to examine the relationship between the mentalization-related parenting construct and toddler's self-regulation, controlling for maternal depression, emotion disapproving beliefs, warmth, cumulative demographic risk, and child's gender. Mentalization-related parenting behaviors (MRPBs) included maternal use of mental state words, use of emotion bridging (linking emotions and behaviors in child and others), and representational mind-mindedness...

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Cultural diversification of communicative gestures through early childhood: A comparison of children in English-, German-, and Chinese-speaking families

Infant Behavior and Development

2018

Previous literature has demonstrated cultural differences in young children's use of communicative gestures, but the results were mixed depending on which gestures were measured and what age of children were involved. This study included variety of different types of gestures and examined whether children's use of communicative gestures varies by their cultural backgrounds and ages. 714 parents of children (6–36 months old) from USA English-, German-, and Taiwan Chinese-speaking countries completed the questionnaire on their children's use of each gesture described in the survey...

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Maltreated children use more grammatical negations

Journal of Child and Family Studies

2018

Many studies reveal a strong impact of childhood maltreatment on language development, mainly resulting in shorter utterances, less rich vocabulary, or a delay in grammatical complexity. However, different theories suggest the possibility for resilience—a positive adaptation to an otherwise adverse environment—in children who experienced childhood maltreatment. Here, we investigated different measures for language development in spontaneous speech, examining whether childhood maltreatment leads to a language deficit only or whether it can also result in differences in language use due to a possible adaptation to a toxic environment...

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