CURRENT FUNDING
Attention training's impact on biobehavioral correlates of behavioral inhibition
Funding: National Institute of Mental Health
Principal Investigator: Koraly Pérez-Edgar, Ph.D.
This five-year study examines the relations between attention and patterns of social behavior and neural functioning. This exciting study will, for the first time, assess these relations before and after a multi-session attention paradigm.
PAST FUNDING
Attention as an Early Mechanism of Socioemotional Development
Funding: Social Science Research Institute
Principal Investigator: Koraly Pérez-Edgar, Ph.D.
This two-year study examines the relations between attention and patterns of temperament in infants and toddlers. This new study will bring together systematic measures of attention and temperament over time. We use video, eye-tracking, and heart rate measurements to give greater insight into the infants’ behavior. The study is funded by a grant from the Social ScienceResearch Institute at Penn State University.
The effects of early temperament on social behavior in adolescence
Funding: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Principal Investigator: Nathan A. Fox, Ph.D.
Co-Investigator: Koraly Pérez-Edgar, Ph.D.
This longitudinal study assesses the temperamental, cognitive, affective, and psychophysiological processes that may influence socioemotional development in young adulthood in a sample of children tracked since infancy. Participants are completing a series of tasks using fMRI at the National Institute of Mental Health. We are also examining factors that help or hinder the transition to college. As such, we are examining issues as varied as their attention bias to threat to their thoughts about romantic relationships
Threat and attention in adolescent anxiety
Funding: National Institute of Mental Health
Principal Investigator: Koraly Pérez-Edgar, Ph.D.
This three-year study will examine potential differences in neural activity (particularly in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex) among adolescents who have either been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or who are temperamentally at risk for anxiety disorders. In addition, the study will examine attentional biases to evocative threatening faces.
Individual differences in deference: Links across cognitive and socioemotional domains
Funding: Jacobs Family Foundation
Co-Principal Investigator: Koraly Pérez-Edgar, Ph.D.
Co-Principal Investigator: Vikram Jaswal, Ph.D.
This award from the Jacobs Family Foundation will provide funding for our new study examining individual differences in children's deference to socially communicated information in the cognitive and socioemotional domains.
Early behavioral and psychophysiological correlates of social processing
Funding: George Mason University Faculty Research and Development Award
Principal Investigator: Koraly Pérez-Edgar, Ph.D.
This award from George Mason University will provide funding for our new study of early behavioral and psychophysiological correlates of social processing.
Assessing the molecular genetic links between early temperament and psychopathology in adolescence
Funding: NARSAD
Principal Investigator: Koraly Pérez-Edgar, Ph.D.
This project brings together multiple gene candidates (DRD4, 5HTT, and CRH) with a large long-term longitudinal study of children first selected in early infancy for temperamental vulnerability to behavioral inhibition, shyness, and potentially anxiety. The children, now adolescents, have been observed over time for individual differences in reactivity, behavioral inhibition, and social functioning. In this study I will examine heritable traits (such as temperament and attention) that may underlie anxiety and are potentially more amenable to genetic analysis than anxiety itself.