Ross Thompson is distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and is director of the Social & Emotional Development Lab. He has served twice as associate editor of Child Development, was a Senior NIMH Fellow in Law and Psychology at Stanford University in 1989-90, and served on the Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development (1998-2000) and the Committee on the Science of Children Birth to Age 8 (2013-15) of the National Research Council/Institute of Medicine. His books include Preventing Child Maltreatment Through Social Support: A Critical Analysis (Sage, 1995), The Postdivorce Family (Sage, 1999), Toward a Child-Centered, Neighborhood-Based Child Protection System (Praeger, 2002), Socioemotional Development (Nebraska Symposium on Motivation; University of Nebraska Press, 1990), and Infant-Mother Attachment (Erlbaum, 1985), and he is currently working on Early Brain Development, the Media, and Public Policy.