Students

General area of research

Developmental psychopathology and emotional development in early childhood—preschool children/ mood disorders

Prerequisites/Special Skills Required of Undergraduate Research Assistants:

Research Assistants must have completed 6 units of 300-level psychology courses or discuss course experience with Dr. Luby. Because of the extensive training required to work with this unique study sample, we ask students to make a minimum 2-semester commitment to the lab.  Learning our procedures is time consuming and students often take much of the first semester simply learning the procedures in the lab.  Thus, RAs gain better experience by spending at least two semesters in the lab.  Often, students are given more responsibility and have the opportunity to learn new skills after their second semester. We also ask RAs to work a minimum of 10 hours per week, for which they will receive Psych 333 credit.

Description of Research:

The EEDP has several ongoing, grant-funded studies. RAs may have the opportunity to assist with the following studies:

Suicidal Thoughts and Actions Research in Kids (STARK): This study, led by Dr. Laura Hennefield, investigates multiple aspects of early-onset suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) in children aged 4-10 years, including what young children know about suicide, how STBs are expressed in young children, and risk factors for developing early-onset STBs.

Neural Correlates of Excitability and Irritability (NeuCORE): This study, led by Dr. Alecia Vogel-Hammen, is designed to help understand how children’s emotional intensity relates to brain activations while experiencing and regulating emotions.

Neurodevelopment of Overcontrol and Anxiety (NOA): This study, led by Dr. Kirsten Gilbert, investigates how the development of a characteristic of “overcontrol” is related to social relationships, moods, behaviors, and anxiety.

Girls’ Lives Online (GLO): This study is examining the relationship between preteen girls’ mental health and social media experiences as well as how rejection sensitivity and puberty impact these relationships.

Preschool Depression Study (PDS): This is a longitudinal study of mood disorders (depression and mania) in children. At the beginning of the study, children were preschool ages 3-6 from a large community-based sample. Currently, many of the participants are now 18+ years old. Assessments performed by staff include a diagnostic psychiatric interview, cognitive measures, and task-based EEG and fMRI.

eLABE – Sleep Study: This study is led by Dr. Caroline Hoyniak. We investigate how sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances contribute to the emergence of depression in early childhood with a subsample of participants who enrolled in the eLABE study. 

THRIVE: THRIVE-Schools is working to see if Parent Child Interaction Therapy-Emotional Development (PCIT-ED) can be delivered by school social workers and counselors to families of their students. THRIVE is an 8 session intervention that can be delivered in-person or through Zoom with a caregiver and child. The study aims to see if this format is feasible for school staff to implement, effective in reducing crisis management related workload long term for school staff and increases accessibility to PCIT-ED, which we already know is effective, for families.

With these studies, research assistants gain hands-on experience using state of the art assessment techniques, are exposed to current trends in diagnostic assessment.  Students will gain understanding of the logistics of conducting research and with the administration of study protocols in a research setting.

Duties of Research Assistant:

Research assistants have a very important role in our lab.  Students’ responsibilities include assisting in the collection, coding, and entry of data obtained from parent and child assessments.  Students have various administrative duties such as organizing research-related materials, assisting in the quarterly newsletter, and obtaining the most current published data. Students also take an active role interacting with subjects during assessments, in EEGs, and occasionally when assisting with childcare.

Daily tasks include:

• opportunities to assist during EEGs or MRIs of adolescent and child participants in a variety of studies or administer other measures (e.g. KBIT with child participants in NOA, help with zoom assessments for THRIVE, etc.)
  • Note: these advanced tasks occur once the student has had 2-3 months of experience/training in the lab.
• other support tasks related to the several different studies being conducted in the EEDP currently (e.g. preparing research session materials, preparing supplies, posting study recruitment flyers, processing sleep data, saliva kit drop-off and pick-up, recording parts of sessions, etc.)
• behavioral coding, transcriptions, data entry

Tasks and time commitment expected of students in the EEDP:

• Students must receive Psych 333 credit for their work in our lab, and are expected to commit to 3 credits of Psych independent study with the EEDP
  • 3 credits are earned via 150 hours of work for the semester required by the psych department, typically 10 hours a week for 15 weeks in spring or fall, or 15 hours a week for 10 weeks in summer
• Students must commit to working in the lab for a minimum of 2 semesters (fall, spring, or summer)
• Students commit to a schedule of weekly shifts which can take place any time between 8:30am-4:30pm, Monday-Friday, and each shift must be at least 2 hours long.
  • (Example: Monday & Friday 9am-2pm for a total of 10 hours)

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Current undergraduate research assistants

Samir Khare

Anna Brody

Jay Simhan

Gabi Skilling

Anna Zhang

Anna Freeman

Maeve Vogl

Nicole Dunkel

Jiwoo Park

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