Work on the effects of nature and nurture have earned a married research couple two prestigious awards.
Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi are set to receive two awards this year for their research on the interaction between genes and environment. Moffitt is the Knut Schmidt Nielsen Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and Caspi is the Edward M. Arnett Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience.
Moffitt and Caspi were notified in June that they had won the first prize—the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize for Productive Youth Development—along with a 1 million Swiss Franc award, the equivalent of more than $1 million. News of the second prize, the Ruane Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Research—a $50,000 award—came three weeks later.
“We just could not believe such marvelous good fortune, twice in one month!” Moffitt wrote in an e-mail.
When they heard the news of the first award, Caspi and Moffitt were researching in New Zealand, during the country’s bitterly cold midwinter.
“For both [Terrie] and I, our first thought was, ‘Will it be warm in Zurich when they have the prize ceremony?’ Our second thought was how great an honor this is!” Caspi wrote in an e-mail.
Moffitt and Caspi’s research has focused on how people’s environment as well as genetics affect psychological outcomes, particularly in those with mental health problems. Moffitt and Caspi drew their most significant conclusions from two longitudinal studies: one in New Zealand, with the children of 1,000 families, and a sister study in Great Britain. The research subjects were studied throughout their lifetimes.
“The purpose of these longitudinal studies is to discover what happens to children who have mental health problems years later, when they grow up,” Caspi said. “Do they grow out of it, versus become violent, or addicted or long-term unemployed?”
In particular, two study conclusions published in The Archives of General Psychiatry proved especially important.
In 2002, the couple published findings showing that children who claimed to hear voices or see hallucinations stood a 50 percent chance of developing adult schizophrenia, Caspi said. A year later, the couple reported that more than half of adults with psychiatric conditions showed symptoms before the age of 15.
Caspi said he and his wife undertook this research with the hope that their evidence could help direct the course of health policy, especially concerning mental health care and illness prevention programs for children. Equipped with such information, policy makers can target psychological problems and risk factors before they manifest themselves as illnesses like schizophrenia and heart disease.
The couple said they hope to use their prize money to further fund their research and ensure quick turnaround in investigating new, “hot” ideas.
“The prize money is very welcome to help our longitudinal follow-up studies survive the years ahead, when government funds for research are suffering cutbacks,” Moffit said. “Our lab at Duke should not have to lay off any research staff.”
Huntington Willard, director of the Institute of Genome Sciences and Policy, wrote in an e-mail that he has used Caspi and Moffitt’s research in his teaching for years—even before the couple’s arrival at Duke in 2007.
Ahmad Hariri, professor of psychology and neuroscience, has collaborated with Caspi and Moffitt for several years and credits them with having more or less created a new discipline in psychology.
“I would describe [their work] as nothing less than revolutionary,” he said.
Reflecting on the experience of working as a husband and wife research team, Moffitt said their grandparents’ generation serves as a role model.
“In their day it was common for couples to work together to operate a family farm or a family business,” she said. “We two have different skills and knowledge that complement each other.”
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