CURRENT PROJECTS

PCAT: Parent-to-Child Anxiety Transmission

This is a NIMH-funded study designed to examine how parents and children develop anxiety and affect each other. We are studying children who are 4 to 6 years old. For this project, we are working with Dr. Susan Perlman and her team at the Washington University in St. Louis.

Parents will play games with their child while we collect data about their brain activity. Parents and children will also get to wear eye-tracking glasses to help us learn what they pay attention to.

Participating families will be compensated for their time and effort. We are particularly excited to have dads participate. If you are interested in joining our study, you can fill out this form, call (814) 867-2322, or email catlabpsu@gmail.com.

HBCD: The Healthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium

The Healthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium is a collaboration amongst 24 sites in the United States. The goal of this consortium is to create a dataset that will allow researchers to examine what influences neurodevelopmental trajectories. To this end, we will look at cognitive, social, and biological measures of healthy development.

We are recruiting pregnant women for this study, who will be compensated for their time and effort. If you are interested in participating, please email hbcd@psu.edu or call (814) 863-6018.

EMIS: Emotion Regulation and Mother-Infant Synchrony

Did you know that babies begin to regulate their emotions as early as 3 months? Of course, they do so in very simple ways, such as sucking their thumb or looking at a colorful toy - which distracts them. Babies also need their caregivers to regulate! Through interacting with their parents, babies pick on emotional cues that can help them soothe when they are upset or feel safe when they are fearful.

In this study, we are interested in understanding how the brain supports these simple strategies that babies use to regulate their emotions. Additionally, we are also interested in whether babies' brains synchronize with their moms' brains when they need mom's help to regulate. To explore these interests, we use functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning, which is a non-invasive method to record brain activity from mom and baby at the same time, while they engage in some games together. We are also asking moms to answer some questions about their health, the baby's temperament, and the home environment to better understand how emotion regulation develops in context.

This study is actively recruiting families. If you have an infant who is 7 months or younger and want to participate, contact us today!