My research interests reflect a developmental psychopathology perspective.
Specifically, my research explores how and why children’s relationships with attachment figures influence their social and emotional development (e.g., emotion regulation, peer relationships). A specific focus of my work is developing and testing models which can help us understand how attachment, in combination with other risk and protective factors (such as child temperament, peer relationships and emotion regulation, or parental psychopathology and parenting) may predict the development or maintenance of childhood anxiety. I am also interested in questions regarding the best approaches to assessing attachment, particularly in middle childhood. An additional direction of research is evaluating how emotion socialization processes are related to healthy development and psychopathology. More recently, I become interested in transactional models (family processes, trauma) associated with borderline personality disorder features, self-injuries, and dissociation in late adolescence.
