Draft:Sam Wass

Sam Wass is a British developmental psychologist and neuroscientist internationally recognized for his theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding the relationship between stress and concentration during infancy and early childhood.

Wass is a Professor of Early Years Neuroscience and Leader of the BabyDev Lab at the University of East London. He has written over 100 academic articles that use methods including home wearables, eyetracking, autonomic monitoring and neuroimaging to understand the relationship between stress and concentration during early childhood, and how young children's stress and concentration are influenced by the environment, and people around them. His research studies typically developing children, children from under-privileged socio-economic backgrounds, and children in early stages of developing conditions such as Autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and anxiety.

Wass is also very active in the publication communication of science. He has appeared as an on-screen scientist in four series of the award-winning Channel 4 Series The Secret Life of 4- and 5-Year-Olds, and as a public spokesperson for the NHS Start 4 Life campaign, the UK Department for Education, and many others.

Biography
Wass received a first-class undergraduate degree in Experimental Psychology from Queen's College, Oxford University. He completed his PhD in London, under Mark Johnson at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck College London, before being awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, based at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University. He was then awarded an Economic and Social Research Council Future Research Leaders Fellowship, for which he moved to the University of East London. In 2020 he was awarded a 5-year Starter Grant from the European Research Council. Other work includes awards from the Medical Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust and Horizon Europe.

Research
Wass's research examines the early development of attention and stress. He has pioneered the use of naturalistic real-world observations of real-world behaviors to study brain functions embedded in real-world settings.

Environmental influences on stress and concentration
Wass's research has developed new techniques including home wearables to study how early home and educational environments affect children's stress and attention. His research has shown that infants from noisy and high-density early living environments show altered physiological stress even as early as 12 months, and that elevated stress in children associates with a profile of strengths (e.g. improved memory retention for rapidly presented objects) as well as weakness (e.g. impaired sustained attention).

His research has also studied how young children first learn to change their behaviors 'on the fly' to compensate for changes in our environment, by changing their behavior to decrease information uptake when external stimulation is too high, and to increase it when it is too low.. This is known as allostasis, which is integral to self-regulation

In addition to regulation, his research has also uncovered how the opposite processes can drive dysregulation, through behaviour changes that occur in response to external stimulation being too high, but which increase it still further. These 'chain-reaction' events occur in parent-child stress contagion and in a tantrumming child. Wass's research has examined these processes in the context of child-caregiver interactions in the early development of anxiety and ADHD.

Attention and stress in social settings
Wass has pioneered the use of concurrent dual brain recordings and home wearable recordings to study how fluctuations in stress and attention are jointly managed across the infant-caregiver dyad. This research has shown that infants and caregivers work together jointly to manage a young child's stress fluctuations and attentional engagement, a process known as co-regulation. . For example, when infants have a peak in their own stress, the caregiver shifts their own stress state to temporarily match the child's. Caregivers' cortical brain activity also tracks their infants' attention patterns to objects and people around them. Infants are also very sensitive to when one of their behaviors evokes a response from the caregiver. Wass's research has suggested that actions which evoke a response from the caregiver are selectively reinforced, which may drive the development of predictive brain mechanisms; and, through that, the development of self-control

Media and public engagement
Wass appeared as an on-screen scientist in four series of the Channel 4 series The Secret Life of 4- and 5-Year-Olds. He has contributed guidance notes on child development for the UK Department for Education, and has appeared as a public spokesperson for Save The Children , and many other organisatations.

Representative publications

 * Wass, S.V., Greenwood, E.M.G., Esposito, G., Smith, C.G, Necef, I., Phillips, E. (2024) Annual Research Review. 'There, the dance is - at the still point of the turning world': dynamic systems perspectives on co-regulation and dysregulation during early development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Annual Research Review: ‘There, the dance is – at the still point of the turning world’ – dynamic systems perspectives on coregulation and dysregulation during early development
 * Amadó, M.P., Greenwood, E., Ives, J., Labendzki, P., Marriott Haresign, I., Northrop, T.J., Phillips, E.A.M., Viswanathan, N.K., Whitehorn, M., Jones, E.J.H., Wass, S.V. (2024) Naturalistic attention transitions from subcortical to cortical control during infancy. eLife. The neural and physiological substrates of real-world attention change across development.
 * Phillips, E.A.M., Goupil, L., Whitehorn, M., Bruce-Gardyne, E., Csolsim, F.A., Kaur, N., Greenwood, E., Marriott-Haresign, I. & Wass, S.V. (2024) Endogenous oscillatory rhythms and interactive contingencies jointly influence infant attention during early infant-caregiver interaction. eLife. Endogenous oscillatory rhythms and interactive contingencies jointly influence infant attention during early infant-caregiver interaction
 * Phillips, E. A., Goupil, L., Whitehorn, M., Bruce-Gardyne, E., Csolsim, F. A., Marriott-Haresign, I., & Wass, S. V. (2023). Proactive or reactive? Neural oscillatory insight into the leader–follower dynamics of early infant–caregiver interaction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 120(15), e2122481120. Proactive or reactive? Neural oscillatory insight into the leader–follower dynamics of early infant–caregiver interaction.
 * Wass, S.V., Phillips, E., Smith, C., Goupil, L. (2022) Vocalisations and the Dynamics of Interpersonal Arousal Coupling in Caregiver-Infant dyads. eLife.  e77399 Vocal communication is tied to interpersonal arousal coupling in caregiver-infant dyads
 * Wass, S.V., Whitehorn, M., Marriot Haresign, I., Phillips, E., Leong, V. (2020) Interpersonal neural entrainment during early social interaction. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 24(4), 329-342. Interpersonal Neural Entrainment during Early Social Interaction
 * Wass., S.V., Smith, C.G., Clackson, K., Gibb, C., Eitzenberger, J., Mirza, F. U. (2019) Parents mimic and influence their infant's autonomic state through dynamic affective state matching. Current Biology. Parents Mimic and Influence Their Infant’s Autonomic State through Dynamic Affective State Matching
 * Wass, S.V., Noreika, V., Georgieva, S., Clackson, K., Brightman, L., Nutbrown, R., Santamaria, L., Leong, V. (2018) Parental neural responsivity to infants' visual attention: how mature brains scaffold immature brains during social interaction. PLoS Biology. Parental neural responsivity to infants’ visual attention: How mature brains influence immature brains during social interaction
 * Wass, S.V. (2018). How orchids concentrate? The relationship between physiological stress reactivity and cognitive performance during infancy and early childhood. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 90, 34-49. How orchids concentrate? The relationship between physiological stress reactivity and cognitive performance during infancy and early childhood
 * Leong, V., Byrne, E., Clackson, K., Lam, S. & Wass, S.V. (2017). Speaker gaze increases information coupling between infant and adult brains. Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences. 114 (50), 13290–13295, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1702493114

Interviews and talks

 * TEDx talk
 * Interview with the Times Educational Supplement
 * Podcast for the Times Educational Supplement
 * Podcast for Early Excellence
 * Podcast for Early Years TV