Lambert was born in Ephraim, Utah, and raised in West Hollywood, California. After earning an undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles and a master's degree at Cal State University Los Angeles, she received a Ph.D. in psychology from University of Southern California. Her doctoral studies focused on psychometrics. She taught at University of California, Berkeley and founded the school psychology program at the education school in 1964, her first year there. The National Institute of Mental Health supported the program for 18 years. Lambert's latest research was on the measurement of adaptive functioning, and on the developmental course of ADHD. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association, she has also served on its board of directors and chaired its Board of Educational Affairs from 1992-94. Lambert wrote such instruments in school psychology as the AAMD Adaptive Behavior Scale and the Children’s Attention and Adjustment Survey. Lambert's other writings include "Educational Reform: Challenges for Psychology and Psychologists," in Professional Psychology ; "Adolescent Outcomes for Hyperactive Children: Perspectives on General and Specific Patterns of Childhood Risk for Adolescent Educational, Social, and Mental Health Problems," in American Psychologist ; "Persistence of Hyperactive Symptoms from Childhood to Adolescence," in American Journal of Orthopsychiatry ; and "Conceptual Foundations for School Psychology: Perspectives from the Development of the School Psychology Program at Berkeley," in Professional School Psychologist. She also edited the volumeHow Children Learn: Reforming Schools through Learner-Centered Education. She was involved in several controversies. In 1995, she was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence," an editorial written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal, which declared the consensus of the signing scholars on issues related to the controversy about intelligence research that followed the publication of the book The Bell Curve. At the 1998 National Institutes of HealthConsensus Conference on AD/HD, she announced the results of a study suggesting that use of Ritalin might contribute to later drug abuse. Of nearly 400 children with ADHD, those treated with Ritalin as children had double the rates of cocaine use and cigarette smoking as young adults, compared to those who had not taken Ritalin in childhood. She was killed in a car accident on her way to work in 2006.
