Lauren B. Adamson

Lauren B. Adamson, an internationally recognized developmental psychologist, died on December 31, 2021 after a long illness. She was 73 years old and lived in Madison, Connecticut. At her death she was Regents’ Professor Emerita of Psychology at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

She was born in Saranac Lake, NY, where her father, Sidney Bernstein, a Yale trained microbiologist, was engaged in research towards a cure for tuberculosis. Both her father and mother were part of an extended, second-generation family of Eastern European Jews who immigrated to New York City, a heritage of which they were very proud. When Lauren was five, the family moved to Milford, CT, where Lauren attended public schools and, in high school, enjoyed working at both an oceanic research lab and a beach stand.

Lauren attended Swarthmore College, where she worked with the great gestalt psychologist, Hans Wallach and graduated in 1970. There she met Walter Adamson, with whom she fell in love; they married at the Yale Faculty Club in 1972. Meanwhile she had entered the PhD program in developmental psychology at Berkeley. After she completed her qualifying exams, the couple moved to Boston, where Lauren worked in the Harvard Medical School research lab of the renowned pediatrician, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton. Their research developed the still-face paradigm, an assessment tool still widely used for understanding infant reactions to face-to-face interactions with their care givers. In 1973-74, Lauren also taught some courses at the Radcliffe Institute and Wellesley College, and in 1977-78, when the couple moved back to Boston for a year, Lauren taught half-time at Wellesley.

In 1975, the couple moved to Walla Walla, Washington, where Walter had taken a teaching position at Whitman College and Lauren worked on her dissertation. Their son Daniel was born there in 1976. In 1980, after the family had moved to Atlanta, Lauren took a position in psychology at Georgia State University. She rose quickly through the ranks, won the esteem of her colleagues, and became Dean of Arts and Sciences in 2003, a position in which she served for nine years. Meanwhile her research on the development of “joint attention” in infants prior to verbal language brought her international recognition and relationships with colleagues from around the world. She was also well regarded for her work on autism.

Lauren gave birth to a second son, Thomas Nash, in 1984 and, more recently, she delighted in her six grandchildren. But these pleasures never diminished her enthusiasm for her research which continued full-throttle even after her formal retirement from GSU in 2015. In 2018 she and Walter moved to Madison to be closer to family as well as the beauty of the Connecticut coast and the excitement of New York City. They celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary in June 2021 with a trip to Monhegan Island, Maine.

In addition to Walter, Lauren is survived by her brother Paul and his wife Lynn of Tacoma, Washington; her son Daniel who lives in Easton CT with his wife Athena and their children Theodore, Jasper, and Sasha; and her son Nash, wife Tammi, and children Janelle, Thomas, and Jonas, of Peoria, Illinois. Her family remembers her as a warm and highly observant person as well as a loving and devoted mother and grandmother who was fond of pilates and knitting, the piano and modern dance, travel and friends.

The family requests that those wishing to make donations in Lauren’s name do so by donating to Connecticut Hospice, 100 Double Beach Road, Branford CT 06405.