Draft:Sam Wass

Wass is a Professor of Early Years Neuroscience and the Director of the BabyDev Lab{{Cite web|url=https://uelbabydev.com/|title=University of East London baby Development Lab|website=UEL Baby Dev Lab}} at the University of East London.{{Cite web|url=https://www.uel.ac.uk/about-uel/staff/sam-wass|title=Sam Wass|website=University of East London}} His research primarily focuses on the role of environmental factors, such as caregiver-child interactions, in the development of attention, concentration, and stress regulation in early childhood.Leong, V., Byrne, E., Clackson, K., Lam, S. & Wass, S.V. (2017). Speaker gaze increases information coupling between infant and adult brains. Wass employs a variety of methods, including home wearables, eyetracking, autonomic monitoring and neuroimaging, to study the dynamics of early childhood development. His studies involve typically developing children, children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, and children in early stages of conditions such as Autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and anxiety.

Wass has co-authored the book Take Action on Distraction{{Cite web|url=https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/take-action-on-distraction-9781801995580/|title=Take Action on Distraction|website=Bloomsbury}} with Gemma Goldenberg, which explores the development of concentration during early childhood. He has also contributed to public understanding of child development as an on-screen scientist in the award-winning Channel 4 series The Secret Life of 4- and 5-Year-Olds{{Cite web|url=https://www.channel4.com/press/news/secret-life-4-year-olds|title=The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds | Channel 4|website=www.channel4.com}} and as a spokesperson for campaigns such as the NHS Start 4 Life and the UK Department for Education.{{Cite web|url=https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/best-popular-factual-programme-the-secret-life-of-4-year-olds/5100146.article|title=Best popular factual programme: The Secret Life Of 4 Year Olds|website=Broadcast}}

Wass completed his undergraduate degree in in Experimental Psychology from Queen's College, Oxford University. He went on to earn a PhD at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck College, University of London, under the supervision of Mark Johnson. After completing his PhD, he was awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, based at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University. He was then awarded an Economic and Social Research Council Future Research Leaders Fellowship, which allowed him to establish his lab at the University of East London. In 2020, Wass was awarded a five-year Starter Grant from the European Research Council.{{Cite web|url=https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA22111/|title=Action CA22111|website=COST}} Other work includes awards from the Medical Research Council,{{Cite web|url=https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/sam-wass/publications/|title=People|website=www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk}} the Economic and Social Research Council,https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/file/erc_2019_stg_results_sh.pdf the Leverhulme Trust{{Cite web|url=https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/listings?field_grant_scheme_target_id=13|title=Grant listings | The Leverhulme Trust|website=www.leverhulme.ac.uk}} and Horizon Europe.

Wass's research investigates how infants develop self-regulation and attention control in response to their early environments. One area of focus is how caregivers and infants co-regulate each other's stress levels during social interactions.Wass., S.V., Smith, C.G., Clackson, K., Gibb, C., Eitzenberger, J., Mirza, F. U. (2019). Parents mimic and influence their infant's autonomic state through dynamic affective state matching. Current Biology 29(14), 2415-2422. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.06.016 Wass's research has used home wearables to study co-regulation, showing that, when infants have a peak in their own stress, the caregiver shifts their own stress state to temporarily match the child's. His research has also shown that young children use their social behaviours to dynamically change how much information they receive from their environments, decreasing the rate of information uptake when external stimulation is too high, and increasing it when it is too low - a process known as allostasis.Wass, S. V. (2023). Allostasis and metastasis: The yin and yang of childhood self-regulation. Development and Psychopathology, 35(1), 179-190. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579421000833

His work has also explored how children adjust their cognitive processing based on environmental stimulation, a concept linked to allostasis—the process by which the body maintains stability through change. In particular, Wass's research has shown that infants can modulate the amount of information they take in based on their current state of stress or attention.

Wass has also examined how early life interactions, such as caregiver speech patterns and joint attention, affect the development of attention and self-control.Wass, S., Porayska-Pomsta, K., & Johnson, M. H. (2011). Training attentional control in infancy. Current biology, 21(18), 1543-1547. His studies have demonstrated that infants are more likely to focus on periodic, rhythmic elements of their environment, such as caregiver speech, which may aid in the development of attentional control even before the child's ability to voluntarily direct attention is fully developed.Wass, S. V., Noreika, V., Georgieva, S., Clackson, K., Brightman, L., Nutbrown, R., ... & Leong, V. (2018). Parental neural responsivity to infants' visual attention: How mature brains influence immature brains during social interaction. PLoS biology, 16(12), e2006328.

In addition to his academic work, Wass is actively involved in public science communication. He has appeared as a scientific expert in several television programs, including The Secret Life of 4- and 5-Year-Olds,{{Cite web|url=https://www.channel4.com/press/news/secret-life-4-year-olds-press-pack|title=The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds Press Pack | Channel 4|website=www.channel4.com}} and has contributed to educational materials for the NHS Start 4 Life campaign and the Department for Education.{{Cite web|url=https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/tag/professor-sam-wass/|title=Professor Sam Wass – The Education Hub|website=educationhub.blog.gov.uk}} He has also written articles and participated in interviews aimed at explaining the neuroscience of early childhood development to a broader audience.

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