Seth D. Pollak, Ph.D.
College of Letters & Science Distinguished Professor
In the Departments of Psychology, Anthropology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, the La Follette School of Public Affairs, and the Waisman Center
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Seth Pollak, an associate professor of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics and researcher at the Waisman Center for Human Development, and Alison Wismer Fries, a doctoral student in clinical psychology, play with a child to demonstrate a procedure they used to study the comparative hormonal response of orphaned and family-reared children. The researchers have shown for the first time that two ‘social bonding’ hormones can potentially run awry when young children suffer emotional and physical neglect in the earliest years of life. In the study, the child’s hormone levels were monitored before and after the child sat in the lap of their mother or unfamiliar woman while participating in an animated and interactive computer game. Photo by: Jeff Miller Date: 2005