Associate Members

My research program bridges the areas of clinical, development, and social affective neuroscience. We study brain function and social-cognitive processes (i.e., interacting with others) that evolve during adolescence.  I build on concepts from mental health research by examining the boundaries between normal and abnormal behavior, to determine how such processes manifest when people are feeling rejected or accepted by others.  I study these processes in healthy adolescents and adults, and those who have, or are at risk for, anxiety disorders.  I am particularly interested in early childhood temperament and exposure to peer victimization, because these can lead to developing psychological disorders.  One way I study this is with functional neuroimaging (fMRI). We image the brain when individuals think that their peers are evaluating them. This allows us to investigate brain function as it relates to social learning, prediction error processing, and fear of negative evaluation.  Another focus of my current research uses eye tracking to assess whether anxious adolescents and adults pay more attention to different aspects of a social situation as they try to decide what their peers are thinking and feeling.  Results from this work will establish whether paying more attention toward specific facial features predict the ability to accurately “read” social situations, and whether these patterns vary across development or psychological disorders.