Research GoalsBroadly, our latest work falls in one of three domains.
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First, we are very curious about why different people in children and adolescents' lives (e.g., parents and teachers) often view their behavior in different ways. In our research, we estimate the size of these differences and why they occur, as well as determine if the differences have an impact on the lives of children and adolescents. Our long-term goal is to understand when differences in people's views of behavior tell us something important about the specific contexts in which these behaviors occur (e.g., disagreements between parent and teacher reports of a child signaling that the child behaves differently in home vs. school). Ultimately, we want these differences in interpersonal perception to serve as key tools for interpreting the behavior of children and adolescents and informing personalized assessments in clinical, research, and school settings. Findings from this work and the theoretical frameworks supporting it have appeared in the Psychological Bulletin, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, and Journal of Child and Family Studies (see ResearchGate profile page). Currently, we are testing a context-sensitive approach to clinically assessing adolescent social anxiety. In collaboration with Christine Ohannessian, in October 2016 we published a Special Issue on these topics in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence (see here for more details).
Second, we seek to improve how researchers incorporate physiological data (heart rate variability and EEG), laboratory observations of behavior, and informants' behavioral reports in community based assessments. Our work in this area focuses on improving comprehensive assessments of parent-adolescent relationships, with emphases on family conflict, parental monitoring, and perceived discrepancies in views on daily life events (e.g., completing chores and homework). Findings from this work have appeared in Psychological Assessment, Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, and Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology (see ResearchGate profile page). In December 2015 and in collaboration with Drs. Christine Ohannessian and Songqi Liu, we received funds from the NSF to conduct our work on parent-adolescent conflict. We also conduct much of this work in collaboration with Drs. Erica Glasper and Sarah Racz through our First-Year Innovation and Research Experience (FIRE) program (see FIRE page). Third, we test novel paradigms for interpreting physiological data when clinically assessing adolescent social anxiety. In one area, we have used innovative methods for graphically representing physiological data, so that clinicians without a background in physiology can incorporate these methods into their clinical work. Initial findings of this work and review papers in this area have appeared in Psychological Assessment, Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, and Professional Psychology: Research and Practice (see ResearchGate profile page). A portion of this work appeared in a recent Special Issue that we prepared in collaboration with Dr. Amelia Aldao in the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. The Special Issue consisted of a collection of empirical articles broadly focused on implementing low-cost physiological measures in clinical child and adolescent assessments, and was published in March 2015 (see March 2015 Issue Page). |