Research at the D&P Lab focuses on the transactional nature through which children’s interactions with their family, community and culture can shape the course of development. Specifically, we are interested in how the integration of biological, psychological and environmental factors can inform our understanding of the development of children who are facing adversity. Guiding our research is a developmental psychopathology perspective, which emphasizes the interface between normal and atypical development. As such, our research focuses on at-risk populations including children from low-income families and children from maltreating families. Our research integrates methods from cognitive, developmental, and clinical psychology, and utilizes a multiple-levels-of analysis approach towards the study of child development and child psychopathology.
Current projects include:
- A NICHD-funded randomized clinical trial evaluating the effectiveness of a brief therapeutic intervention for maltreating mothers and their preschool-aged children
- A NICHD-funded longitudinal evaluation of theoretically-informed explanatory mechanisms linking adversity to child behavioral and physical health at multiple levels of analysis, with a focus on behavioral and biological self-regulation of the parent and child
- A NIMHD-funded longitudinal study of mediators and moderators of associations between racial discrimination and mental health among Latinx adolescents and their parents.
- A NIMH-funded randomized clinical trial evaluating the efficacy of two novel treatment approaches to prevent adolescent suicide.