Our research.
Affiliation & social relationships
Affiliation - the motivation for and reward gained from social closeness - is a fundamental human capacity. We are investigating affiliation across development, including what happens when affiliative processes are disrupted.
Empathy, prosociality, & guilt
What happens when the development of empathy, prosociality, and guilt goes awry? How can we use our knowledge of their development to prevent antisocial behavior and violence?
Genetically-informed studies
An inherent challenge in developmental research is to separate the inherently intertwined influences of nature and nurture. We use a host of study designs to tease apart genetic from environmental influences and inform our understanding of development.
Parenting & child development
We use a variety of methods to study positive parenting, including observation, self-reported, and coding of language, as well as investigating how parenting shapes child development and how we can make parenting interventions more effective.
Pregnancy & lifespan health
We believe that healthy development begins in utero. We are studying all the influences on child development ("the exposome") that start during pregnancy, including the health and well-being of mothers.
