Tony DeCasper

Anthony (Tony) DeCasper was a former Developmental Psychology Professor at the University of North Carolina. He began his graduate work at the University of Iowa and received his PhD from Emory University. DeCasper's main research was behaviorism focused on prenatal and infant cognitive abilities and behavior. His research began with newborn babies. His experiment used operant conditioning by exposing babies to an auditory stimulus in correlation with sucking. This research discovered that babies could "choose" the auditory stimulus by changing their sucking patterns. DeCasper moved on to research the learning abilities of babies before birth as well. Dr. DeCasper was one of the first people to research memory and learning abilities of infants. His research was ground-breaking in the area of cognitive development. DeCasper's research changed the way that parents, researchers, and health providers viewed the mental capacities of infants and helped make headway in the research area of learning.

Busnel, M.C., Fifer, W., Granier-Deferre, C., Lecuyer, R., Michel, G., Moon, C., Panneton, R., Schaal, B., & Spence, M. (2016). Tony DeCasper, the man who changed contemporary views on human fetal cognitive abilities. Dev Psychobiol. DOI: 10.1002/dev.21478