Briggs-Gowen, Margaret J., PhD                                                           

Title: Assistant Professor
Department: Psychology
Institution: University of Connecticut Health Center
Mailing Address: 263 Farmington Avenue, Farmington, CT 06030-1410
Phone: (860) 679-3872
mbriggsgowan@uchc.edu

Margaret Briggs-Gowan, Ph.D., is a Developmental Psychologist with expertise in developmental psychopathology beginning in early childhood. In addition to her formal training, she also has been a fellow of Zero to Three, a national organization devoted to advancing research and practice in early childhood. Much of Dr. Briggs-Gowan’s research focuses on developing methodologies for identifying social-emotional and behavioral problems and delays in competence in young children, as well as on the etiology and course of childhood psychopathology. She is co-author, with Alice S. Carter, Ph.D., of two measures designed for assessing social-emotional/behavioral problems and delays in competencies in infants and toddlers: the Infant-Toddler Social & Emotional Assessment, or ITSEA, and Brief-ITSEA, or BITSEA, both of which were recently nationally standardized and published with Harcourt Assessment. Dr. Briggs-Gowan is especially interested in the implementation of screening for social-emotional problems in pediatric primary care settings. Current work, in collaboration with researchers at Yale, is examining the implementation of screening with the BITSEA in hospital primary care clinics.

Dr. Briggs-Gowan also is involved in several National Institute of Mental Health funded studies, including the Connecticut Early Development Project, a longitudinal birth cohort study of over 1300 children born in the Greater New Haven, Connecticut area. This cohort was first studied during infancy and toddlerhood. Children are now being followed in elementary school with assessments that are focused on children’s mental health, social functioning, and academic achievement. In addition to this work, Dr. Briggs-Gowan is involved in innovative, multi-method, research on disruptive behavior in preschool children (with Principal Investigator Lauren Wakschlag, Ph.D., at the University of Illinois at Chicago). Most recently, Dr. Briggs-Gowan has become involved in a multi-site translational network grant focusing on the development of models for advancing understanding of preschool psychopathology and its neural substrates.