Brief Description:

Dr. Victoria Molfese was the inaugural director of the ECRC and the first Ashland-Nystrand Endowed Chair on Early Childhood Education from 1999-2011. Dr. Molfese is nationally recognized as an expert in the development of language, reading, and math skills during early childhood.

This article featured on the University of Nebraska website celebrating Dr. Molfese's body of work on her retirement states the following:

Victoria Molfese discovered a passion for studying children and the different factors that impact their learning, such as parent relationships, child characteristics, and how relationships influence learning ability. Since Victoria Molfese and her husband have intersecting interests in research when it comes to what affects learning and the way the brain processes information under certain stressors, they have had the unique opportunity to collaborate throughout their careers.

This has led to impactful research that contributes to further understanding about how children learn. The Molfeses spent fifteen years doing a longitudinal study funded by the the National Institute of Health tracking children from birth in order to learn how children pick up language skills and what effect the initial ability to hear and discern sounds has on the eventual ability to pick up words and use language.

We include a few of the articles that were posted on the original UofL ECRC website during Dr. Molfese’s tenure while the Endowed Chair and Director here. While this list only represents a small slice of the work she completed while she was here, it does showcase the power of the work she did that involved graduate students, teachers, and a variety of interdisciplinary scholars.

Publications:

Growth of Cognitive Skills in Preschoolers: Impact of Sleep Habits and Learning-Related Behaviors. Early Education and Development 20(4), 713-731.
By: Eunjoo Jung, Victoria J. Molfese, Jennifer Beswick, Jill Jacobi-Vessels, and Andrew Molnar

Alphabetic Skills in Preschool: A Preliminary Study of Letter Naming and Letter Writing. Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), 5-19.
By: Victoria J. Molfese, Jennifer Beswick, Andrew Molnar, and Jill Jacobi Vessels

Discrimination of language skills at five years of age using event‐related potentials recorded at birth. Developmental Neuropsychology, 13(2), 135-156.
By: Dennis L. Molfese and Victoria J. Molfese

Dynamic Links Between Emerging Cognitive Skills and Brain Processes. Developmental Neuropsychology, 33(6), 682-706.
By: Dennis L. Molfese, Victoria J. Molfese, Jennifer Beswick, and Jill Jacobi Vessels