Current/Recent Projects
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In this NICHD funded project, we are examining maternal responses to infant negative emotions in a sample of 250 first-time mothers. The goals of the project are to identify predictors of maternal sensitivity to infant distress, to determine if sensitivity to distress predicts unique variation in infant emotional well-being over and above sensitivity to non-distress, and to examine racial differences in early emotion socialization beliefs, practices, and outcomes. Visit our project website for more details: http://triadchildstudy.uncg.edu/ There are multiple opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to be involved in this project as research assistants. Please email us at trichild@uncg.edu if you are interested. A brief news clip about this study is available here (following a brief commercial): http://www.wxii12.com/What-s-The-Best-Way-To-Deal-With-Crying-Babies/-/9678472/11918622/-/15uunyez/-/index.html
Women, Work and Wee Ones
This NICHD funded project is a collaborative effort involving the Wake Forest University School of Medicine (Joseph Grzywacz, Co-PI) and UNCG’s Center for Youth, Family and Community Partnerships (Stephanie Daniel, Co-PI) and Department of Human Development and Family Studies. The goals of the study are to examine the impact of mothers’ working a nonstandard schedule (anything other than the standard 9 to 5 arrangement) on mothers’ well-being, parenting behavior, and infant health and social emotional development in a low income sample and to identify individual, familial, and social factors that promote resilience in this type of work arrangement. Leerkes is a co-investigator along with Drs. Chris Payne, Charles Randall Clinch, and Beth Reboussin
School Transition and Academic Readiness (STAR)
In the first NICHD funded project, we examined emotional and cognitive precursors to early school success in a sample of 250 children and families. Click here for a list of manuscripts that stemmed from this project.
Recently, we were awarded a new grant from NICHD to extend this work in a new sample of children by including measures of children’s neural processing while completing challenging tasks and measures of their learning engagement in school. To learn more about this study, visit our website.
These projects are a collaborative effort of two departments: Human Development and Family Studies (Drs. Susan Calkins, Marion O’Brien, and Esther Leerkes) and Psychology (Dr. Stuart Marcovitch).
Infant Parent Project
In this NICHD funded project, we followed 100 first-time expectant couples from the third trimester of pregnancy until their children were 3 ½ years old. The goals of this project were fourfold: 1) to identify personality characteristics and family factors that influence mothers' beliefs, goals, and feelings about infant emotions; 2) to determine if these beliefs, goals, and feelings in conjunction with infant temperament influence maternal sensitivity to negative infant emotions in a diverse sample; 3) to examine the influence of early parenting behavior and beliefs on subsequent child outcomes; and 4) to identify characteristics of mothers, fathers, and the parenting context that affect marital/partner satisfaction and individual adjustment during the transition to parenthood. Click here for a list of works that stemmed from this project.
Attachment and the Transition to College
In 2005 and 2006, graduate student Stephanie Parade and I collected data from incoming freshmen college students. The purpose of this study was to understand how students’ relationships with their parents influence their experiences at college. Students completed an online questionnaire at three time points over the transition to college: 1) the summer before their first semester of college; 2) the end of their first semester of college (December of the freshman year); and 3) the end of their second semester of college (May of the freshman year). From this data we have examined the influence of parental attachment security on 1) the development of friendships and romantic relationships at college; 2) psychological wellbeing at college; and 3) engagement in risk behaviors at college. Consistent with predictions derived from attachment theory, we found that secure attachment to parents prior to the freshmen year was positively associated with satisfaction with and ease in forming friendships and romantic relationships at college. Furthermore, we demonstrated a significant indirect effect of parental attachment security on relationship outcomes through social anxiety for racial minority participants. We also found that parental attachment security was linked with engagement in high risk behaviors at the end of the freshmen year. Click the below links to see posters based on this study:
Parade & Leerkes, 2007 (pdf)
Parade & Leerkes, 2008 (pdf)
Attitudes About Crying
In 2004, graduate student Kathy Siepak and I collected data from nearly 500 undergraduate students. The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between emotion socialization in the family of origin, current attachment security in close relationships, and adults’ emotional and cognitive responses to crying. Students viewed two 1 minute long video clips of different infants crying loudly. Following each clip, the respondents filled out questionnaires about the infants in the videos and their reactions to them, how their parents responded to their negative emotions in childhood, attachment styles in current close relationships, and demographics. Consistent with prediction, a history of parental emotional rejection and adult attachment anxiety and avoidance correlated negatively with accurate identification of emotions and positively with negative attributions, amusement, and neutral responses to infant distress. Adult attachment security moderated the effects of early parental rejection on emotional and cognitive responses to infant distress, and these results varied based on respondent race and their parents’ gender. Click here to see a manuscript based on this study (Leerkes & Siepak, 2006). (pdf)