People

Principal Investigators

Jennifer Ablow, PhD (Co-Director)

My research investigates the processes that underlie the intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation. For example, how is it that infants frequently come to manage their emotion in ways that are reminiscent of their parents? How do parents actually help their infants to regulate their emotions before they can actually do so for themselves? Within one line of research, I have merged attachment and psychobiological perspectives to identify both prenatal and neonatal markers of risk for insensitive parenting. By following parent-infant dyads forward, I then examine how parents’ emotional arousal and regulation shape similar emotion processes in their very young children (ages 0-3). In a second line of work, I examine how emotional arousal and regulation in the marital relationship “spill-over” to shape young children’s socioemotional development. Critical to this transmission process are children’s subjective appraisals of their parents’ marital dynamics, in particular, young children’s sense of distress about their parents’ conflict as well as the vulnerabilities that accrue to children who assume blame for their parents’ difficulties.

With my colleague Heidemarie Laurent, PhD, we also investigate the “maternal brain.” We are particularly interested in mapping the neural responses of depressed and non depressed mothers to a variety of infant cues -- cry, facial displays of emotion -- to explain differences in parenting behaviors, infant attachment status, and infant neurobiology.

I am currently an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon.

Email Dr. Ablow at: jcablow@uoregon.edu

Jeffrey Measelle, PhD (Co-Director)

My research seeks to identify early sources of psychopathology in childhood, in particular, family processes that adversely influence the development of very young children’s psychobiology. A major focus of our work currently is parental sensitivity, which plays a critical role in shaping infants’ earliest development – both prenatally and neonatally -- through processes of biological and behavioral synchrony. Within the context of sensitive versus neglectful or abusive parent-infant and parent-child relationships, I am particularly interested in how biological systems responsible for the regulation of emotions (autonomic nervous systems, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-cortex) become coordinated with each other and with behavioral self-regulation. New investigations are underway within our lab examining the genetics of early self-regulation as well as pre- and neonatal epigenetic processes that support the development of self-regulatory systems in children at genetic risk for ADHD.

Global Children’s Development, Health, and Well-Being: Along with colleagues at Friends without A Boarder, I am currently conducting baseline health and well-being research in Laos as well as conducting behavioral intervention research at the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Cambodia. This new direction for our lab will provide students interested in children’s development around the world with both basic science and applied research opportunities in South East Asia.

Jeff is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon. Email Dr. Measelle at: measelle@uoregon.edu

Graduate Students

Michelle Fong

My research interests revolve around the relationship between high-risk rearing environments and developmental psychopathology. Currently, I am interested in physiological underpinnings of emotion regulation in infancy and early childhood, and how early rearing environments interact with children’s psychobiology. Email Michelle at: mfong@uoregon.edu

Xiaoning Sun

I study development trajectories toward psychopathology, in particular, the roles played high risk early environments in shaping the development of mental health problems in children. Using data from the From Pregnancy to Parenting your First Baby Project, currently I am studying how parental ideology and associated parenting behaviors mediate the association between maternal histories of abuse and child attachment classification. Email Shining at: sun2@uoregon.edu

Undergraduate Students

We have a great team of undergraduates working in the lab.

Lab Alumni

Elisabeth Conradt, PhD

Dr. Conradt completed her APA clinical psychology internship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Brown Center for Children at Brown University. To learn more about Dr. Conradt’s work, you can link to her web site here.

Checkout the recent press on Dr. Conradt’s work on NPR by clicking on right!

Cindy H. Liu, PhD

Dr. Liu completed her APA clinical psychology internship at McLean Hospital, Harvard University, Boston. She is currently the Director of Multicultural Research at the Commonwealth Research Center at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston and Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Megan McDade-Beers, PhD

Dr. McDade-Beers completed her APA clinical psychology internship at the Oregon Health Sciences University and is currently Postdoctoral Fellow at the Early Childhood Clinical Research Center Bradley/Hasbro Research Center & Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

Erica Musser, PhD

Dr. Musser completed her APA clinical psychology internship at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. In the fall of 2013 she will be joining the faculty at Florida International University as an assistant professor.

Julia Oppenheimer, PhD

Dr. Oppenheimer completed her APA clinical psychology internship at the University of New Mexico Medical School and is currently Postdoctoral Fellow at the

Rebecca Silver, PhD

Dr. Silver completed her APA clinical psychology internship at the University of New Mexico Medical School and is currently Postdoctoral Fellow at the Early Childhood Clinical Research Center Bradley/Hasbro Research Center & Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.