Faculty Research Interests

Loisa BennettoProfessor Bennetto’s research focuses on the neurocognitive bases of autism spectrum disorder.  Her work examines the role of multisensory processing in social-communication difficulties and in everyday behaviors.
Patrick DaviesProfessor Davies’s research interests lie in children's socioemotional adaptation and maladaptation within the context of close interpersonal relationships especially in family contexts.
David Dodell-FederProfessor Dodell-Feder's research aims to understand the processes that contribute to healthy and disordered social functioning, and their improvement, with a particular focus on schizophrenia spectrum disorders.
Andrew ElliotProfessor Elliot’s research focuses on approach and avoidance motivation, achievement motivation, social motivation, and well-being.
Marie-Joelle EstradaProfessor Estrada's research focuses on interpersonal relationships – specifically romantic relationship initiation and progression over time. Additionally, she also studies how relationships interact with gender, marketing, and health-related concerns.
Liz HandleyProfessor Handley’s research focuses on understanding the impact of family adversity on development for individuals and families. Her research aims to identify the outcomes, mechanisms, and moderators associated with exposure to family adversity, such as child maltreatment and parent psychopathology, across the life course and across generations. 
Isobel HeckProfessor Heck's research focuses on how young children come to represent and think about societal hierarchies, political systems, and social group-based inequities.
Jeremy JamiesonProfessor Jamieson's research focuses on how stress influences emotions, decisions, and performance, and how emotions can be regulated to optimize stress responses.
Bonnie LeProfessor Le's research focuses on well-being in interpersonal relationships with a focus on the role of emotion and motivation.
Christopher NiemiecProfessor Niemiec is interested in human motivation, emotion, and personality in social contexts. His research uses self-determination theory to examine the nature and functional significance of autonomy in a variety of life's domains.
Jennie NollProfessor Noll's primary research foci include the bio-psycho-social consequences of childhood sexual abuse, pathways to teen pregnancy and high-risk sexual behaviors for abused and neglected youth, the long-term adverse health outcomes abuse survivors, midlife reversibility of neurocognitive deficits in stress-exposed populations, the impact of high-risk internet and social media behaviors on teen development, and the primary prevention of sexual abuse.
Christie PetrenkoProfessor Petrenko's research focuses on developing and empirically testing novel ways to increase access to care for people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) across the lifespan.
Harry ReisProfessor Reis’s research interests involve social interaction and close relationships.
Ronald RoggeProfessor Rogge’s research focuses on understanding romantic relationships, from the early stages of dating to marriage, with a specific focus on mindfulness and psychological flexibility processes.
Karl RosengrenProfessor Rosengren's work focuses on cognitive and motor development and how these interact over the course of development. His work also focuses on how children reason about the world and how cognitive and motor factors influence how they act on the world.
Judith SmetanaProfessor Smetana’s research examines adolescent-parent relationships and development in cultural contexts; children's moral and social reasoning; and development of parenting beliefs.
Lisa StarrProfessor Starr's research focuses on the origins and consequences of depression and anxiety in adolescents and adults. Particular emphases include understanding the interface between psychopathology and the social environment and delineating complex, reciprocal, and interactive relationships between interpersonal, cognitive, and biological risk factors and internalizing symptoms.
Melissa Sturge-AppleProfessor Sturge-Apple’s research focuses on family processes, parental functioning, and child development guided by theoretical conceptualizations derived from developmental psychopathology, self-regulation frameworks, evolutionary developmental theories, and parenting process models.
Sheree TothProfessor Toth is the Director of Mt. Hope Family Center. Her research interests are broadly focused in the field of developmental psychopathology. She is especially interested in the processes and mechanisms that contribute to the adaptation of children who are confronted by significant psychosocial adversity. In particular, her work addresses the development of children who have experienced maltreatment or who have been reared by a depressed caregiver. Dr. Toth is also committed to the evaluation of preventive interventions for high risk populations.
Nestor TulaganProfessor Tulagan’s primary research examines the family factors that contribute to the development of academic motivation and achievement of adolescents from racially/ethnically minoritized backgrounds.
Miron ZuckermanProfessor Zuckerman's research concerns psychology of religion, economic and gender inequality, and topics related to well-being.