Research

The adults in children’s lives shape how they learn, grow, and experience the world. My research examines home and school environments as interconnected systems of care, where parents and teachers play a central role in shaping children’s experiences and fostering resilience in the face of adversity. I aim to bridge developmental science and practice by producing scientifically innovative evidence to guide initiatives that promote lasting, positive change for young children and families.

My scholarship is on behalf of children who are unjustly affected by policies that maintain the structure of poverty, and to their caregivers who are often provided with no good options and expected to make impossible choices. My own experiences growing up in a low-income, multicultural family guide my work and energize this sense of purpose.

Early adversity shapes children’s development

Children around the world grow up in dynamic environments characterized by varying levels of enrichment and adversity. A formative line of my research examines how poverty and other forms of early adversity affect children’s academic, cognitive, and social-emotional health outcomes across global contexts. This work shows that, in urban Ghana, persistent poverty and the timing of adversity uniquely shape later academic and psychological well-being, and that facing multiple risks undermines children’s learning through their executive functioning. Moreover, in my U.S.-based work, I am currently developing an integrative framework for improving how anti-poverty programs are accessed and implemented, motivated by my experiences observing the cascading consequences of system fragmentation.

  • Suntheimer, N.M. & Wolf, S. (2023). Duration of poverty and Ghanaian children’s academic skills and executive function. Applied Developmental Science, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2023.2225774

  • Suntheimer, N. M., Wolf, S., Sulik, M.J., Avornyo, E.A., & Obradović, J.O. (2022). Executive function mediates the association between cumulative risk and learning in Ghanaian schoolchildren. Developmental Psychology, 58(8). https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001372

  • Do, H., Suntheimer, N.M., Smith, A., Dunn, E.C., Aurino, E., & Wolf, S. (in preparation). Accumulation and sensitive periods of childhood adversity on adolescent development in Ghana.

  • Suntheimer, N.M., Pullom, K., & Ip, K. (in preparation). An integrative framework for how anti-poverty policies shape child development.

Strengthening home environments to support child development

My second line of research focuses on how parents’ psychological well-being and cognitively stimulating parent–child interactions serve as levers for early learning. Across geographic contexts, including Ethiopia and the U.S., I find that parents’ well-being shapes their learning investments and children’s development. Extending this work, in Ghana, I identified distinct patterns of cognitive stimulation, which were equally promotive of school-related skills and reified a strengths-based perspective for the diverse ways parents support early learning. A large-scale meta-analysis—across 130 studies and 60 countries—further affirmed that stimulating interactions consistently promote development, although the associations were fairly small. I am also contributing to the design and evaluation of a family-based intervention in urban Ghana, the Pempamsie Family Program, led by Drs. Sharon Wolf, Elisabetta Aurino, and Richard Appiah.

  • Suntheimer, N.M., Ju, S.G., McCoy, D.C., Wolf, S., Abate, S., Mekonnen, A., Teshome, T.Z., & Demlew, T. (2024). Parent psychological distress and beliefs about nurturing care: Associations with parent investments and early child development in Ethiopia. Developmental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001820

  • Suntheimer, N. M., Weiss, E.M., Avornyo, E.A., & Wolf, S. (2024). Patterns of cognitive and social-emotional parent stimulation practices among Ghanaian kindergarteners. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 68, 203-213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2024.05.011

  • Hatch, S.F.^, Suntheimer, N.M.^, Otwell, A., Tang, L., McCoy, D.C., & Wolf, S. (revise & resubmit). Caregiver Cognitive Stimulation in early childhood and child development: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin. [preprint] ^ indicates equal contribution

  • Aurino, E., Suntheimer, N.M., Appiah, R., Wolf, S., Avornyo, E.A., Fishman, J., Thomas, K., Brennan, K., David, D., & Howusu-Kumi, E. (under review). Developing and piloting a context-driven intervention for adolescent development in Ghana. BMC Global Health.

Strengthening school environments to support child development

In my third line of research, I examine the relational and structural qualities of school contexts that can shape learning and foster resilience for children facing hardships at home. In the U.S., I have shown that close teacher-child relationships in kindergarten buffer the negative effects of cumulative risk on academic and cognitive outcomes. In Ghana, my colleagues and I found positive impacts of the Quality Preschool for Ghana school-randomized trial on children’s remote learning activities during COVID-19, five years post-intervention. Teacher well-being is also protective in this context: Children whose teachers reported greater job satisfaction performed better on math assessments during COVID-19 school closures.

  • Suntheimer, N.M. & Wolf, S. (2020). Cumulative risk, teacher-child closeness, executive function and early academic skills in kindergarten children. Journal of School Psychology, 78, 23-37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2019.11.005

  • Wolf, S., Aurino, E., Suntheimer, N. M., Avornyo, E.A., Tsinigo, E., Behrman, J. & Aber, J.L. (2022). Medium-term protective effects of quality early childhood education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana. Child Development, 96(6), 1912-1920. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13824

  • Gerstner, C.C., Suntheimer, N.M., Weiss, E.M., Appiah, R., Aurino, E., & Wolf, S. (under review). Home and School Factors Associated with Math Trajectories Before and After COVID-19 in Ghana. Child Development.