USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Summary Statement of Research Interests

• My research is focused on understanding how children and adolescents face and overcome adversity, particularly within the context of family and peer relationships. I am especially interested in what makes children and their families fare better or worse in the face of various, often typical, stressors. As such, my work addresses the role of family factors in combination with individual characteristics that may exacerbate or protect youth from negative developmental outcomes as well as promote positive developmental trajectories. Influenced by family systems and spillover theories, I investigate family members’ mutual influence on one another, and the reciprocal nature of everyday family processes. I employ novel methodologies such as daily diaries and direct observations of family interactions to understand day-to-day and moment-by-moment processes in the family – e.g., repeated, immediate family interactions – that may support or undermine long-term psychological health and well-being. My research has examined daily fluctuations in marital conflict as they relate to children's daily mood and the impact of family violence history on observed patterns of marital and parent-child interactions. I am also interested in the connection between family violence and youths' conflict and aggression in their own romantic relationships. Before coming to USC, I worked on the Fullerton Longitudinal Study where I examined the roles of child temperament and family conflict in predicting youth psychopathology.