Karen Diamond

• Early Childhood: There is substantial evidence that young children who are at-risk enter school already behind their peers. Dr. Diamond's research focuses on the development and evaluation of interventions with early childhood teachers that support the academic and social development of young children at-risk.
• Diversity and Culture: While it is increasingly common for young children with disabilities to participate in preschool with typically developing peers, children with disabilities have fewer opportunities for social interactions with peers. Dr. Diamond's research focuses on typically developing children's ideas about age-mates with disabilities and influences on children's decisions to include a peer with a disability in play.

Jennifer Dobbs-Oates

• Early Childhood: Dr. Dobbs-Oates' research is focused on the relationship between pre-academic skills and social-emotional development in preschool-aged children. A particular area of focus is on interventions directed toward literacy and mathematical skills and their outcomes in both pre-academic and psychosocial domains.

Aryn Dotterer

• Adolescence and Young Adulthood: Dr. Dotterer's work in this area examines the development of ethnic/racial identity, school transitions, academic achievement and school engagement, and parent-adolescent relationship quality.
• Diversity & Culture: Dr. Dotterer is interested in child development and parent-child relationships among low-income and ethnic minority families. Her work examines racial, gender, and achievement socialization in African American families; relations between discrimination at school and school engagement among African American and Latino adolescents; and parenting practices and school readiness among African American, Latino, and European American children.
• Relationships: Dr. Dotterer studies parent-child relationships from early childhood through late adolescence. She examines race and SES differences in parenting beliefs and parent-child interactions and their links to school readiness. She also examines parent-child relationships in adolescence including changes in relationship quality during adolescence and socialization practices (race and achievement). Dr. Dotterer is interested in the links between parent-child relationships and adolescent academic achievement and school engagement.

James Elicker

• Early Childhood: Dr. Elicker is investigating child care quality and young children's development in early care and education contexts. (Evaluation of Child Care Quality Rating Systems; Child Care Quality and Child Outcomes in Low Income Working Families)
• Relationships: Dr. Elicker is investigating the nature and developmental influences of teacher-caregiver relationships with infants and toddlers in early childhood programs. (Early Head Start; Tuning In)

Karen Fingerman

• Adolescence and Young Adulthood: Dr. Fingerman's research has focused on young adults' prolonged dependency on parents. This work addresses variability in support patterns. Some parental support is intended to foster success in young adulthood (e.g., help getting through college), but other support addresses specific problems (e.g., single parent, loss of job).
• Adult Development and Aging: Emotional qualities of relationships improve across adulthood; as they grow older, adults report better relationships with their children, spouses, extended family, and friends. Dr. Fingerman's research examines the emotional qualities of interpersonal ties from young adulthood to late old age and seeks to explain this marked improvement in relationship processes.
• Biobehavioral Processes: Dr. Fingerman is interested in stress hormones (cortisol, DHEA) underlying family support patterns. Family is a mainstay of support in the U.S. and research has shown that intense caregiving for older adults has deleterious impact on health. Provision of support in everyday contexts may be stressful and demanding and exert physiological harm. By contrast, such support may be rewarding and exert stress buffering effects physiologically.
• Families, Development and Health: The longest period of the parent/child relationship is the two decades when both parties are adults and in relatively good health. Dr. Fingerman's research examines the effects of intergenerational exchanges and emotional patterns on parents' and offspring's well-being from young adulthood to late old age.
• Relationships: Adults of all ages place a high value on their interpersonal relationships, but few studies focus on relationships in late life. Dr. Fingerman's research examines ties between adults and their parents (one of the most important relationships of late life) as well as friendships, romantic ties, and the host of other social ties of old age.

Melissa Franks

• Biobehavioral Processes: In her research on marital interactions in the context of chronic illness management, Dr. Franks explores biobehavioral processes as intervening mechanisms in, and as markers of, anticipated linkages among social and health lifestyle behaviors of each partner and the health behaviors, physical health and well-being outcomes of the other. Her current work includes innovative nutrition assessments of both married partners in daily management of diabetes and is conducted in collaboration with Dr. Carol Boushey from the Department of Foods and Nutrition.
• Adult Development and Aging: Dr. Franks' research focuses on dyadic processes of married couples managing chronic illness in middle and late life.
• Families, Development and Health: Dr. Franks' research focuses on the ways in which a spouse's involvement in the day-to-day management of her or his partner's chronic illness affects the health and well-being of both married partners. In her research, Dr. Franks also investigates correspondence in health behaviors between married partners, and the influence of this correspondence on their marital interactions and on their individual health and well-being.

Doran French

• Adolescence and Young Adulthood:
• Diversity and Culture:

Leah Hibel

• Biobehavioral Processes: A key aspect of Dr. Hibel's work involves the integration of biological markers (e.g., markers of the psychobiology of the stress response) into studies of the family.
• Families, Development and Health: Dysregulation of stress physiology is thought to be an early indication of disease processes (e.g., cardiovascular disease). Dr. Hibel studies how stressful family contexts and relationships affect family physiology, and mental and physical well-being.
• Relationships: Mothers play a critical role in facilitating the development of biobehavioral regulation in the child. Dr. Hibel examines how mothers regulate child physiology, and how other family relationships (i.e., marital) may affect her physiology, and her ability to sensitively respond to her child. (the Mother-Child Physiology Project)
• Work and Family: Mother's participation in the work force has dramatically increased over the last fifty years. Dr. Hibel explores how maternal employment, especially work with non tradition schedules (i.e., shift work) effects both mother and child physiology. (the Nurse-Mom Project)

Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth

• Adult Development and Aging: One of the primary contexts within which adult development occurs is the workplace. Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth's research has examined connections between work conditions and adult expressions of generativity, or investments in caring for and maintaining the larger society.
  Families, Development
• Families, Development and Health: Stressful experiences at work have been linked to a variety of health-related behaviors. Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth is interested in connections between work stressors and psychological and physical well-being.
• Relationships: Many marriages are affected by events that occur in the partners' workplaces. Workers' experiences affect not only their own well-being, but reverberate within the marital relationship. Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth's recent research considers the impact of deployment on marital dynamics.
• Work and Family: Other than home, the workplace is the setting where adults spend most of their time. Work conditions influence many aspects of family life, and Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth's research focuses on how challenges and opportunities at work are linked to individual and family well-being. In recent years, this research has been conducted in both military and civilian settings.

Daniel Mroczek

• Adult Development and Aging: Dr. Mroczek's work looks at how personality and well-being change over time, and how that change is related to physical health and mortality.
• Biobehavioral Processes: Dr. Mroczek is interested in the biobehavioral processes that underlie the predictive connection between personality traits and mortality. Specifically, he is interested in the way particular personality traits lead to certain health behaviors (or lack thereof), which in turn lead to illness or health, mortality or longevity. He is also interested in physiological pathways between personality and health, especially those that involve stress hormones such as cortisol or immune system parameters.
• Families, Development and Health: Dr. Mroczek's work looks at how family variables and family contextual variables interact with personality factors to predict physical health, mortality, and other health outcomes.

Judith Myers-Walls

• Diversity and Culture: Dr. Myers-Walls' work has included populations from Serbia, Korea, the Philippines, and multiple cultural groups in the U.S. Publications and training programs have focused on the cultural context of parenting and of family life education, and study-abroad programs have allowed students to experience Indian culture in depth.
• Relationships: Dr. Myers-Walls' work has focused on the parent-child relationship and how parents talk with children about difficult topics, especially war and peace. Numerous publications have explored processes and alternatives in delivering parenting education to parents, prospective parents, and professionals.

Douglas Powell

• Early Childhood: Early literacy and language skills provide an important foundation for later school success, including reading competence. Dr. Powell_s research focuses on the development and evaluation of professional development interventions with pre-kindergarten teachers aimed at enhancing the early literacy and language development of at-risk preschoolers.

Germán Posada

• Diversity and Culture: Attachment theory suggests that attachment relationships is a universal phenomenon that is sensitive to context. Dr Posada's research investigates central propositions of the theory through studies that include cross-cultural, cross-ethnic, and cross-SES explorations and comparisons to test the generality and specificity of attachment relationships processes.
• Relationships: Dr. Posada's research focuses on the development of child-parent attachment relationships in infancy and early childhood. It includes both behavioral and representational issues, as well as contextual influences in the development of such relationships. Longitudinal observational methodologies in naturalistic settings are emphasized.

Cleveland Shields

• Families, Development and Health: Health concerns are central to family life across the developmental spectrum. Dr. Shields' research examines how couples and families manage the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. My students and I study family communication and its effect on adjustment. We also study how patients and family members communication with healthcare providers affects their mental health and quality of life.

Seung-Hee Son

• Diversity and Culture: Dr. Son's research tries to find ways to disentangle a complex web of sociocultural and maturational factors on child development, by comparing low-income, Asian, and Latine-American children's experiences in home and school.
• Early Childhood: Dr. Son's research examines the impact of aspects of the home and preschool learning environment and parental involvement in education on young children's language, literacy and numeracy skills learning and seeks ways to design evidence-based intervention programs for at-risk low-income children's school readiness, especially using home reading and writing activities.
• Relationships: Dr. Son's research includes longitudinal examination of parenting and home learning environment during early childhood, the extent and impact of parenting changes, bidirectional relations between child development and parenting, and measures of parenting that best predict children's language and literacy development.

Doug Sprenkle

• Relationships: Dr. Sprenkle's work focuses on the key ingredients in therapeutic change that cut across competing models of change called "common factors" in the change process. These include factors like therapist competence, the therapeutic alliance between therapist and client, and the allegiance of the therapist and researcher to his/her model vis a vis the alternative treatment. These common factors contribute more to the variance in outcome than specific treatment effects.

Shawn Whiteman

• Adolescence and Young Adulthood: Dr. Whiteman's research examines the family processes related to youth's family relationships and individual adjustment from adolescence into early adulthood. He is particularly interested in how siblings directly and indirectly influence each other's attitudes, behaviors, and personal qualities during this period.
• Families, Development and Health: One of Dr. Whiteman's emerging interests is how siblings influence one another's health risk behaviors in adolescence and early adulthood. Specific attention is paid processes by which older siblings influence their younger brothers' and sisters' alcohol and substance use.
• Relationships: Dr. Whiteman's research examines the direct and indirect ways siblings influence family relationships and individual adjustment. A related interest, secondary interest is the application of different research methodologies to the study of family relationships.