Michael Lewis (born January 10, 1937 in Brooklyn, New York) is University Distinguished professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry, and Director of the Institute for the Study of Child Development at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School – University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. He is also Professor of Psychology, Education, and Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers University and serves on the Executive Committee of the Cognitive Science Center at Rutgers.
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His research has focused on normal and deviant emotional and intellectual development. By focusing on the normal course of development, he has been able to articulate the sequence of developmental capacities of the child in regard to its intellectual growth and relate this to changes in the organization of its central nervous system functioning. His discoveries of techniques to measure CNS functioning, through the use of the habituation-dishabituation paradigm, are widely used throughout the country and have become the standard measurement system used to predict dysfunctional growth as well as normal development. Using these measurement instruments, he has been able to develop computer-based techniques for enhancing intellectual ability in children suffering from a variety of disorders associated with retardation. These include children with Down syndrome, preterm infants, and children with cerebral palsy.
In his 1979 book, Social Cognition and the Acquisition of Self, he began the research on the use of mirror recognition. His 1983 book, Children's Emotions and Moods, was the first volume devoted to emotional development, and his Handbook of Emotions (1993) was awarded the 1995 Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Book Award. Through his pioneering efforts in both theory and measurement, Dr. Lewis has been one of the leaders in the study of emotional development. His 1992 book, Shame: The Exposed Self, continued his interest in emotional development, turning attention to the little studied areas of self-conscious emotions.
In his book, Altering Fate: Why The Past Does Not Predict The Future (1997), a finalist for the 1998 Eleanor Maccoby Book Award, Lewis attempted to describe various developmental theories and argues for the proposition that early childhood does not seal one's fate. Professor Lewis argues that children's environments, at whatever age, determine how children behave, and he suggests that altering environments should be the major task in effecting social adjustment and mental health.
Besides Children's Emotions and Moods, Shame: The Exposed Self, Altering Fate: Why The Past Does Not Predict the Future, Social Cognition and the Acquisition of Self (1979) and Language Interaction Intervention Program: A Workshop Curriculum for Parent Training (1991), Dr. Lewis has authored four research monographs as well as 31 edited books, the most recent of which are the Handbook of Developmental Psychopathology (2000) and an Introduction to Infant Development (2007). In addition, he has had published over 350 articles and chapters in professional journals and scholarly texts.
Among his honors, Dr. Lewis is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, American Psychological Association, and American Association of the Advancement of Science, as well as the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. In 1995, he was ranked by a University of Notre Dame Study, number 1 in terms of the impact of scientists who are most referenced and productive in the field of developmental sciences and is currently in the top 1.5% of scientists referenced in the Social Science Index.