Rachel Keen (born October 5, 1937, in Burkesville, Kentucky) is a developmental psychologist known for her research on infant cognitive development, auditory development, and motor control. She is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Virginia. Keen received the 2005 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Research in Child Development, and the 2018 Distinguished Contribution Award from the International Congress on Infant Studies. Keen received an Honorary degree from Uppsala University in 2009 and was honored by the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences. She received the 2011 Award for Distinguished Service to Psychological Science from the American Psychological Association (APA). Before 2002, she published under the name Rachel Keen Clifton. Biography Keen received her B.A in Master of Arts from Berea College in 1959. She continued her education at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, where she completed her Ph.D. in 1963, under the supervision of Harold W. Stevenson. Her dissertation used a non-nutritive sucking paradigm to study discrimination and habituation to tones in newborn infants. Keen was awarded an NICHD postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin to continue her studies of newborn behavior using psychophysiological measures. While at the University of Wisconsin, she studied infant development under the supervision of Frances K. Graham. Their collaborative work explored attention in newborn infants, using heart rate activity as an indicator of habituation. Keen was a long-standing member of the faculty at the University of Massachusetts (1968-2007) prior to joining the faculty of the University of Virginia in 2007. Her research career was supported by a Research Scientist Award from NIMH (1981-2001), and a MERIT award from NICHD (1999-2009). Her awards include the Distinguished Alumna Award from Berea College, and the Distinguished Faculty Award from the University of Massachusetts. Keen was awarded membership to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Acoustical Society of America, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Psychological Association. Research Keen is known for pioneering scientific studies of infant cognition, with many of her experiments using habituation to study infants' developing perception and cognition. One of her most significant discoveries was that newborns remained habituated to auditory stimuli even after a delay of 24 hours. She replicated the findings years later using speech stimuli and behavioral responses. Her work suggested that