I initially studied at the University of British Columbia and the University of London. Subsequent to postdoctoral research at Dalhousie University, I conducted research for many years at the University of New Brunswick, studying the acquisition of thought, language, and related psychosocial processes in children and youth.

I now conduct research at UBC as an Honorary Emerita Professor of Psychology and continue at UNB as an Honorary Research/Emerita Professor. My early studies of young children's cognition have broadened to include: Cross-cultural studies of lying and truth telling, honesty and trust and intellectual integrity; emergent literacy; communications; young children and teens' humour; cultural studies of early years thriving, adolescent and older adult resilience; and psychosocial stress reactivity. In 2010, our Day in the Life (DITL) team published International perspectives on early childhood research: A Day in the Life, that was translated into Italian as Un giorno nella vita: Percorsi internazionali di ricerca della prima infanzia in 2015, and was recently followed in 2018 by a book in Portuguese, Psicologia do desenvolvimento: Um dia na Vida, reporting on our global DITL studies of thriving children in transition to school.

I enjoy collaborating with my valued current students and colleagues and indeed some of my former students, who have often taken me far afield from my early roots in childhood cognition.