SPD Scientific Work Group Participants

Goldsmith, H. Hill, PhD

Title: Professor
Department: Psychology
Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Mailing Address: 328 Psychology Building, W J Brogden, 1202 W Johnson St, Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-9932
hhgoldsm@wisc.edu

H. Hill Goldsmith, Ph.D., is UW Foundation Fluno Bascom Professor and Leona Tyler Professor of Psychology. He is Faculty Coordinator of the Social and Affective Processes Unit of the Waisman Center. As of September 2005, Dr. Goldsmith will also be Director of Clinical Training in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Goldsmith's research focuses on emotional development and childhood behavioral problems. The main content areas are the autism spectrum, childhood internalizing and externalizing, typical emotional development during infancy and toddler-hood, temperament, and emotion regulation. He is particularly interested in mechanisms of risk and resilience, in delineating subtypes and component phenotypes of clinical phenomena, and in understanding gene-environment interactions. The principal research methods are quantitative genetics, behavioral assessment, clinical interviews, and measurement of central (e.g., EEG), peripheral (e.g., cardiac psychophysiology), hormonal, and molecular genetic factors. Much of the research is highly collaborative, with researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and elsewhere. The interface of typical development with borderline clinical problems is a major emphasis across projects.


Dr. Goldsmith's early training was in Biology and Genetics, followed by graduate work in Human Behavioral Genetics. His postdoctoral training in Psychiatry focused on Developmental Psychopathology and human infant behavioral development. Among the specific skills that Trainees can acquire in Dr. Goldsmith's lab are statistical techniques for longitudinal and genetic data; psychometrically sound methods for questionnaire construction; design of behavioral assessment procedures for infants and children; structured clinical interviewing; facial affect coding; integration of hormonal and other physiological measures with behavioral data; and rudiments of psychiatric epidemiology. Among the conceptual issues that Trainees will become familiar with in Dr. Goldsmith's lab are contextual effects on behavior; the endophenotype approach to analyzing syndromes; gene-environment interactions relevant to clinical outcomes; and risk and resilience.