Brain atrophy is a sign of neuropathological aging, and it is associated with multiple neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Schizophrenia, Parkinsonโs disease, and Multiple Sclerosis. Additionally, Alzheimerโs Disease (AD) related plasma biomarkers can be used as a proxy to measure neurodegeneration and assess AD related changes. To better understand the link between...
It is widely understood from empirical studies and anecdotal experiences that Individuals with ADHD are highly distractible by external stimuli, such as noises and visual stimuli. However, the underlying behavioral mechanisms behind this susceptibility warrant further exploration.
How might diagnostic status (Healthy Control vs. ADHD) impact responses to irrelevant, conflicting stimuli ? Do...
The oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) plays a crucial role in social behavior and emotion regulation. Methylation of OXTR (OXTRm) reduces receptor expression and has been associated with individual differences in socio-emotional behavior and neural maturity (Skyberg et al., 2023). This study investigates the relationship between neural maturity and OXTRm trajectories in children aged 4-13...
Resilience is a dynamic process defined as positive adaptation in the face of adversity. Growing research suggests that resilience to adversity is characterized by both the absence of negative outcomes (e.g., psychopathology) and the presence of positive functioning (e.g., satisfaction with life) across multiple behavioral domains, such as psychological well-being, social competency, and...
The metaphor of a battery that gets depleted when engaging in effortful activities and needs to be recharged in a recovery period has governed much of psychological research over the past decades (Baumeister et al., 1998). This depletion model has been extensively criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds (Inzlicht & Friese, 2019), but might nevertheless be the predominant belief lay...
Preterm birth (< 37 weeks gestational age) is a global public health concern, affecting more than 13 million (10%) infants worldwide annually. Although studies suggest that preterm infants are more likely to develop speech or language disorders compared to infants born full-term, research on language development of preterm infants in early childhood has yielded inconsistent results. This...
Previous research has demonstrated that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a promising, non-invasive intervention for Alzheimerโs disease and related dementias (ADRD). tDCS modulates cortical excitability of underlying brain regions via primary effects on excitatory neurotransmitters such as glutamate (Glu). Neuroimaging studies have reported varying levels of Glu and amyloid ๊ต...
This study investigates how childrenโs speech is affected by language-specific characteristics, how these characteristics differ between children who speak one or more languages, and how these characteristics are related to the reparation of misunderstandings. Further, we focus on how children use fundamental frequency and interjections in speech as tools to repair misunderstandings....
Middle school studentsโ experiences of their school environment influence their attitudes toward school and learning behaviors. Furthermore, early adolescence is a critical time of identity and social development when youth are typically in middle school. The Phenomenological Variant of the Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST) guides this investigation of the relationship between racial identity...
High-quality relationships are one of the most important predictors of well-being and are strongly linked to both mental and physical health across the lifespan (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010). Yet what makes a relationship high quality? In the current work, we tested whether moments of synchronyโin which two people converge in their thoughts, emotions, or behaviorsโare important components of...
Research on patterns of moral behavior over time indicates that sequential moral decisions can influence one another. More specifically, an initial moral or immoral behavior can increase the likelihood of subsequently engaging in behavior of the same moral value (moral consistency) or the opposite moral value (moral balancing). There are two forms of moral balancing: Moral licensing refers to...
384 participants (218 Males, 55% White, Mage = 35.81) completed a computerized foraging task with others under threat. Results showed that participants are more likely to forage in the presence of other social agents, adjusting for threat and resource availability (p < .001), supporting Social Baseline Theory from behavioral ecology.
Supporting Summary: Objective: Social Baseline Theory...
Little is known about the role of social-emotional skills in supporting disadvantaged youth in completing key benchmark qualifications, and potential differences by social background, sex, ethnicity. This study addressed this gap by estimating linear probability models based on the nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (N=15,770). The findings reveal that...
This project investigates whether caregiversโ use of a development diary app (Pebbles App; https://www.pebbles-app.com) influences the development of their children. This influence could be evident by changes of the age at which developmental milestones are attained (Age of Attainment; AoA). The Pebbles App collects data on the timing of developmental milestones by asking caregivers if their...
Dyadic coping (i.e., coping with stress as a couple) is essential for partnersโ well-being and couple functioning. Promptly attuning or โsynchronizingโ oneโs behavior to the behavior and needs of the stressed partner can be a key element of effective dyadic coping. Research evidence from various types of dyads (e.g., parent-child, therapist-patient) shows that synchrony (e.g., physiological,...
Over 150 million women use hormonal intrauterine devices (IUDs) that prevent pregnancy by releasing a constant dose of the androgenic progestin levonorgestrel into uterine tissue. Past research has linked androgenic progestins to enhanced spatial skills, particularly three-dimensional (3D) mental rotations; yet there is no systematic research on spatial skills in IUD users. The current study...
Trust enables reciprocity and sustained cooperative relationships. Therefore, being able to determine who can be trusted is crucial. Trusting a trustworthy partner maximizes mutual benefits; withholding trust from an untrustworthy partner minimizes chances of being exploited. Little is known about the developmental origin and cognitive foundation of trust in young children. The current study...
Affective working memory (AWM) refers to the ability to maintain an emotional feeling state in the absence of the eliciting stimulus. An emotion maintenance task is used to measure AWM abilities where participants view two consecutive emotional images, matching in valence but differing in intensity, after which participants decide which image evoked a more intense experience of emotion....
Parents exert a significant influence on their children's development through both genetic and environmental pathways. Behavioral studies have demonstrated this intergenerational transfer across various behaviors, including attachment styles, emotion regulation strategies, and the development of psychopathologies. However, the extent to which this transfer can be observed at the neural level...
Previous research has demonstrated that police officers exhibit racially biased search practices. These models are predominately limited to measures of bias at the aggregate. These aggregated models ignore the rates of bias for individual officers working within a police department. We compare a measure of bias that accounts for the unknown contraband rate to those models that do not in...
DNA methylation age (DNAmAge), or โepigenetic clocksโ, surpass chronological age in their ability to predict age-related morbidities and mortality. This study utilized data from 287 middle-aged twins in the Lousiville Twin Study, including 60 monozygotic and 41 dizygotic complete twin pairs (mean age 51.9 years ยฑ 7.03). We investigated the effect of DNAmAge acceleration on change in cognition...
Family conflict (e.g., arguments, threats) and parental psychological control (e.g., guilt inducement, withdrawal of love) are associated with a variety of negative outcomes for adolescents, such as greater emotional reactivity and less emotional security. As a result, adolescents may be poorly equipped to meet the emotional and behavioral needs of their children if they become parents...
