Each year, distinguished scholars from around the world, leading practitioners and young investigators are invited by the Jacobs Foundation to the Jacobs Foundation Conference at the Marbach Castle on the shores of Lake Constance in Germany. The goal of this three-day event hosted by the Foundation is to bring together world class researchers to present cutting-edge findings about a specific aspect of productive youth development. This will culminate in the production of a volume for the Jacobs Foundation Series on Adolescence published by Cambridge University Press. 

In 2008 the Jacobs Foundation Conference focused on “Early Childhood Development and later Achievement”. Early childhood is without any doubt a highly important phase of human development.  During the first few years of life, our brain undergoes major changes, depending not only on genetic factors but also on environmental influences. It seems quite surprising that systematic research on many aspects of early life is still lacking. Infants cannot talk to us, and for this reason it is not easy to develop methods which allow us to learn about their feelings and thought processes. Only recently have we begun to explore in detail the complex interplay between brain processes and changes in behavior. There is relatively little knowledge about how higher order cognitive skills as well as social skills develop. One major goal of the conference was to bring together internationally well-known experts doing edge cutting research in different areas of early childhood development, and to provide a setting in which these experts can think more deeply about the implications of their findings for questions of application. The question of how early emerging abilities relate to later achievement and what can be done to help children grow to their potentials were the core questions of the conference.

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