Research Summary: I have pursued two main areas of study: early
emotion development and childhood anxiety/obsessive-compulsive disorder. With
respect to the former area, I am interested in the development of
emotion regulation in both normative and atypical populations, with
particular attention to family and peer factors that may constitute
risks for or buffers against future pathology. To address such
questions, I have studied emotion socialization in toddlers and in
infants.
Socialization is also pertinent to my interest
in childhood OCD as I am interested in the impact of family context on
the emergence and maintenance of the disorder. Moreover, the potential
impact of family factors on the development of OCD-related cognitions
(e.g. inflated responsibility, overestimation of threat, importance of
controlling one’s thoughts) is particularly interesting to me as a
disorder mechanism. My dissertation work focuses on examining anxious cognitions as a mediator of the relationship between family socialization and anxious symptom expression. Moreover, I will be gathering qualitative data on the experience on relgious socialization and how it relates to thought-action fusion and inflated responsibility.
My clinical interests include anxiety disorders and
mood disorders in adolescents and adults, especially in individuals with
a history of trauma. Self-harm and parasuicidal behaviors are of particular interest to me in the context of emotion regulation. Additionally, I am interested in treatments of childhood anxiety disorders that involve the inclusion of family members.
