Department of
Psychological and Brain Sciences

My main research goal is to learn how children's behavior problems and social competencies develop. I am especially interested in family interaction processes and child temperament, but also consider child social cognitive and affective characteristics and broader socioeconomic variables. A recent interest concerns the role of children's sleep in their daily adjustment. We have studied these issues mostly through longitudinal research. We have learned, for example, that early child temperament and mother-child interaction characteristics are somewhat predictive of children's later adjustment, as measured especially by the parents' report of child behavior problems, and also by teachers and peers at school and by laboratory observers. We have been considering the effects of mother-child relationship and temperament as interacting predictors of later adjustment. We have found that in dyads where mothers are low in restrictive control, temperament is more predictive of late.