Dr. Zalewski is interested in risk factors that predict the development of emotion regulation and profiles of disrupted HPA-axis responding in children and adolescents. She focuses on broader cumulative risk factors as well as more proximal risk factors such as parenting behaviors of mothers with psychopathology. Specifically, she focuses on mothers with symptoms of borderline personality disorder, as many of these individuals struggle with emotion dysregulation and have childhood trauma histories, both of which are known parenting risk factors.