Marinus H. "Rien" van IJzendoorn (May 14, 1952) is professor of human development and one of the co-leaders of Generation R at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. His work has focussed on the social, psychological, and neurobiological determinants of parenting and child development, with special emphasis on attachment, emotion regulation, differential susceptibility hypothesis, and child maltreatment.
Biography In 1976, van IJzendoorn graduated cum laude at the University of Amsterdam. Two years later he obtained his PhD magna cum laude at the Free University of Berlin/Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education. After this he continued his work at Leiden University. In 1981, at age 29, he became full professor. Van IJzendoorn worked as a guest researcher at several places in the United States and Israel. He received a Pionier-grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research in 1991, which was used for the start of a new research group. In 1998 he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1998 and 1999 he was the dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. In 2004 Van IJzendoorn received the Spinoza Prize for his work. In 2007 he was awarded for his Distinguished International Contributions to Child Development by the Society for Research in Child Development, and in 2008 he received an honorary doctorate at the University of Haifa. In 2011 he received the Aristotle Prize of the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations, and the Bowlby-Ainsworth Founder Award of the Center for Mental Health Promotion and The New York Attachment Consortium. In 2013 he was awarded the Dr Hendrik Muller Prize from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science since 2011. Van IJzendoorn is an ISI Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher 2016 placing him in the top 1% most cited scientists in the psychology/psychiatry world over the years 2004–2014. Van IJzendoorn was one of the founders of the Lolle Nauta Foundation (now extinct) that aimed to stimulate the study of education, developmental psychology, and child and family studies on the African continent. Van IJzendoorn still holds an appointment (until 2022) as professor of human development at the Department of Psychology, Education, and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and is a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge.
Research
Attachment Van IJzendoorn's main research topic is attachment across the life-span. Attachment has been briefly defined as children's "strong disposition to seek proximity to and contact with a specific figure and to do so in certain situations, notably when they are frightened, tired or ill". Inspired by Darwinian evolutionary theory and Harlow's experimental work with rhesus monkeys, John Bowlby was the first to propose that human genetic selection had favoured attachment behaviours since they increased infant-parent proximity, which in turn enhanced the chances for infant survival. Attachment is considered to be an inborn capacity of every exemplar of the human species. Individual differences in the quality of attachment emerge in the first years of life, and central to attachment theory is the idea that parenting, more specifically parental sensitive responsiveness to the infant's distress signals, determines whether children develop a secure or an insecure attachment relationship with their primary caregiver. Van IJzendoorn introduced in 1995 the quantitative model of the 'transmission gap' between parents' attachments and their infants' attachment as mediated by parental sensitive responsiveness. This model generated a host of empirical studies trying to bridge the gap (see for a meta-analysis of this work).
Video-feedback intervention Together with Femmie Juffer and Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg, Van IJzendoorn developed and tested In the Video Intervention to promote Positive Parenting (VIPP) program Video feedback provides the opportunity to focus on the infant's videotaped signals and expressions, thereby stimulating the parent's observational skills and empathy for his/her child. It also enables positive reinforcement of the parent's moments of sensitive behaviour shown on the videotape. In the Video Intervention to promote Positive Parenting-Sensitive Discipline] (VIPP-SD) thematic discussions about limit setting issues are included, based on Patterson's ideas about coercive cycles (see: Morality throughout the Life Span), in order to support parents of 'terrible two's and three's' to deal with discipline in a consistent and warm manner. Twenty years of thoroughly testing the VIPP and VIPP-SD programs in randomized trials in various at-risk and clinical groups have demonstrated its efficacy in improving positive parenting skills: The combined effect size on parenting sensitivity is substantial. Separate modules have been developed for use with home-based and centre-based child care (VIPP-CC), Turkish-Dutch families (VIPP-TM), and families with a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (VIPP-AUTI).
Differential susceptibility The differential susceptibility hypothesis proposes that in positive environments vulnerable children may outperform their peers who turn out to be less susceptible not only to bad environments but also to optimal environments. Moreover, the same characteristics that make individuals vulnerable to adversity also make them disproportionately likely to benefit from contextual support. What characteristics render individuals susceptible to environmental influences? Three broad constructs have been proposed and tested as markers of susceptibility: (a) reactive temperament, (b) biological sensitivity to stress, and (c) genetic make-up. The idea of genetic susceptibility was coined by the Leiden team. Importantly, the efficacy of interventions might be underestimated or even go undetected as a main effect when it is hidden in interactions with (genetic, biological or temperamental) characteristics of the recipient of the intervention.
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