Dr. Adolph is currently an Associate Professor of Neural Science at New York University.  In the Infant Action Laboratory, Karen and her students use the acquisition of motor skills in infancy as a way to study learning and development, particularly how infants react and adapt in novel or risky situations. 

Dr. Adolph received her Master's and Ph.D. from Emory in 1989 and 1993, respectively.  Since then, she spent time at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Carnegie Mellon University before moving to NYU in 1997 as an Associate Professor of Psychology, before joining the Neural Science department in 2002.

Most Cited Publication (39 cites):

Adolph, K. E., Eppler, M. A., & Gibson, E. J. (1993). Crawling versus walking infants’ perception of affordances for locomotion over sloping surfaces. Child Development: Special Issue on Biodynamics, 64, 1158-1174.

Most Recent Publications:

Adolph, K. E. & Berger, S. A. (in press). Motor development. In W. Damon & R. Lerner (Series Eds.) & D. Kuhn & R. S. Siegler (Vol. Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol 2: Cognition, perception, and language (6th ed.) New York: Wiley.

Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Adolph, K. E., Dimitropoulou, K. A., & Zack, E. A. & (in press). “No! Don’t! Stop!”: Mothers’ words for impending danger. Parenting.

Joh, A. S. & Adolph, K. E. (in press). Learning from falling. Child Development.

Berger, S. E., Adolph, K. E., & Lobo, S. A., (in press). Out of the toolbox: Toddlers differentiate wobbly and wooden handrails. Child Development.