Bio:

Professor MacKenzie has over fifteen years of experience working with severely abused and neglected children in residential care in Ontario, Canada. This work with children whose early childhood experiences have profoundly shaped the course of their lives sparked his passion for improving the lives of maltreated children and those growing up in out of home care through his work on early relationship intervention strategies and alternative models of care when maintaining families is not possible. Dr. MacKenzie is also certified in the use of the NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale (NNNS) for the comprehensive assessment of newborn infant neurobehavioral functioning. The NNNS is especially well suited for at risk infants and those with prenatal substance exposure, and has been a useful clinical tool for providing depressed mothers and other vulnerable groups with a sense of connection with their new baby.

Research Interests:

• Dynamic Processes in Human Development over the Lifespan
• Social, Familial and Biological Transactions in Developmental Psychopathology
• Child Maltreatment Prediction and Prevention in Early Childhood
• Foster Care Placement Trajectories and Models of Group Care
• Child Welfare Policy and Practice

Current Projects:

• Attachment and change processes in a population of children in Foster Care
• The accumulation of ecological risk and early child maltreatment outcomes over the first sixteen years of life
• Behavioral, emotional, and physiological regulation in toddlers of depressed mothers followed from pregnancy through the first two years of life
• Evaluation of the effects of an early relationship based intervention for burdened families on caregiver perceptions of their infant and interaction style

Recent Publications:

Sameroff, A. J., & MacKenzie, M. J. 2003. Research strategies for capturing transactional models of development: The limits of the possible. Development and Psychopathology, 15, 613-640.

Sameroff, A. J., & MacKenzie, M. J. 2003. A quarter century of the transactional model of child development: How have things changed? Zero-to-three, 24, 14-22.

MacKenzie, M. J. 2006. Understanding and defining family violence in a global context. [Review of the book International perspectives on family violence and abuse: A cognitive ecological approach]. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 27(3), 278-279.

McDonough, S. C., & MacKenzie, M. J. 2006. Crying behavior and its impact on psychosocial child development: Comments on Barr, Stifter, and Zeskind. To appear in R. Tremblay, R. Barr, & R. Peters, (Eds), The Canadian Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development Encyclopedia.

Krawetz, R.., MacKenzie, M. J., Sun, Q., Walton, P. A., & Kelly, G. M. 2006. G?13 activation rescues Moesin-depletion induced apoptosis in F9 Teratocarcinoma cells. Experimental Cell Research.

Manuscripts Under Review:

MacKenzie, M. J., Lunkenheimer, E. S., & Shields, A. M. From attachment to peer relationships in middle childhood: Differing pathways for boys and girls.

Rosenblum, K. L., Freeark, K., Zakaria, L., & MacKenzie, M. J. Child emotion regulation, parenting behavior, and child behavior problems in families with internationally adopted children. Submitted to Development and Psychopathology.

Tucker, D. J., & MacKenzie, M. J. Attachment theory and change processes in foster care. Submitted to Development and Psychopathology.

Last updated January 24, 2008.