HDFS Department Research Projects

A sample of research projects in progress are listed here (for a more detailed description of faculty research interests and projects, go to HDFS Faculty and view the individual bios). Research projects currently looking for graduate students are marked with **.

Scroll down for descriptions of these research projects
or visit their websites!!.........

**The Daily Stress and Health Study (Steven Zarit, P.I.).  The goal of the DASH Study is to better understand the stresses that caregivers experience and how Adult Day Service use may protect them from the harmful effects of care-related stress on their health.  Our previous research has documented the benefits of adult day services (ADS) on the well-being of family caregivers providing assistance to an older adult with a dementing illness.  A follow-up study that examined the effects of ADS on the person with dementia yielded similar findings, namely, in reducing the person with dementia’s behavior problems and improving mood.  That study pointed to a 66% reduction in exposure to dementia-related symptoms for caregivers on days they used ADS, which we hypothesize could have implications for a caregiver’s health and well-being.  Building on these findings, The Daily Stress and Health Study examines daily stress, well-being, and health symptoms in family caregivers of people with dementia, and compares their functioning on days when their relatives are in ADS to when they are not.  The study involves a face-to-face interview with caregivers, followed by daily diary interviews and daily saliva collection for eight consecutive days.  The combination of diary data and saliva samples will allow us to link behavioral data with biological stress markers that have the potential to advance our understanding of the pathways by which daily stressors affect health, and to help us learn how ADS and similar approaches might reduce that risk.  The study is a collaboration between Penn State University (HDFS and BBH), the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services, and the New Jersey Adult Day Services Association.  Funding for the study is provided by the National Institute on Aging. 

**Project SIESTA (Study of Infants’ Emergent Sleep Trajectories) (Douglas M. Teti, Ph.D.) is a longitudinal study of (1) linkages between infant sleep quality during the first two years and infant cognitive (e.g., information processing) and socioemotional development (e.g., quality of infant-parent attachments, infant behavior problems and behavioral competencies); (2) how parenting of infants at bedtime and night time (from video-recordings), beginning as early as 1 month of age, affects the development of infant sleep quality over time; and (3) the role of parenting, and parental adaptation to infant sleep patterns, in predicting infant developmental outcomes and infant stress reactivity (diurnal cortisol activity). Project SIESTA is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

**Project Touch (Douglas M. Teti, Ph.D.) tests whether a program of cue-directed tactile stimulation (CDTS) reduces the stress reactivity (salivary cortisol) of premature infants and is taking place in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Hershey Medical Center. Because mothers can benefit from giving massasge, mothers in the intervention group get massage training as well and are encouraged to massage their infants whenever they come to visit them in the NICU. Project Touch also assesses intervention effects on mothers’ perceptions of their infants’ temperaments and of themselves as mothers, on infant heart rates and vagal tone, and on infant weight, head circumference, and length.

**Minds of Mothers Study (MOMS) (Douglas M. Teti, Ph.D.) makes use of electroencephalographic (EEG) and event related potential (ERP) recordings from mothers in response to pre-recorded emotional events created by their own infants, and is examining patterns of EEG and ERP responding which we believe index patterns of emotion regulation in mothers in the context of parenting. We believe such patterns will inform us about how well, or poorly, mothers emotionally regulate during parenting events, and can be used to identify parents “at risk” better than more traditional, paper-and-pencil measures or “social address” measures (e.g., social class). The MOMS employs the tools of affective neuroscience to understanding parenting at risk from a process, rather than static perspective.

Child Brain Development Lab Website

**Dopamine and ADHD (Lisa Gatzke-Kopp, Ph.D.). Several theories of the neurobiological pathophysiology of ADHD have been proposed, tested, and supported through neuroimaging, genetics, and psychophysiological research studies. However, a consensus regarding the underlying neural deficits remains unachieved. The failure to consistently identify a single neurobiological deficit may result from two key factors that are overlooked in current research designs. Firstly, etiological heterogeneity may underlie the diagnostic construct of ADHD suggesting that no one theory is primary. Secondly, neurobiological deficits may interact with contextual variables such as family environment in the manifestation of the disorder. A careful characterization of each of these factors has the potential to contribute significantly to our understanding of treatment for this disorder, and inform mechanisms of both treatment response and non-response. This project will assess children who are currently medicated for ADHD both on and off their medication. Children will be assessed with EEG, ERP, cardiac, and electrodermal psychophysiological measures to understand more about heterogeneity in the underlying deficits of these children, and how these deficits interact with family dynamics.

**Violence Prevention (Lisa Gatzke-Kopp, Ph.D.). Research indicates that children who display highly aggressive behavior at a young age are at a significantly increased risk for a lifetime of aggression, violence, and substance use that not only jeopardize their own safety and well being, but that of society’s as well. Most attempts at treatment for these conditions occur after significant problem behavior has been identified, and for some children the only “treatment” received is disciplinary in the form of the justice system. A fundamental problem is that we still do not fully understand the biological and social causes of the development of violent behavior, which will significantly assist in our attempt to prevent it.

The current project, conducted by the Penn State Prevention Research Center, will target kindergarten students who are identified as significantly aggressive. Physiological assessments including EEG, ERP, cardiac and electrodermal measures, will be made both before and after an intensive intervention program aimed at students and parents. Physiological data will be used to address questions of mediation (does the intervention have an impact on ongoing neural development to alter the trajectory of the development of violent behavior) as well as moderation (can the physiological data be used to understand more about individual variability in treatment response and better identify those who will respond well to intervention, and what might be needed to better serve those who do not respond to current intervention programs). These are vital questions to improving the efficacy and effectiveness of currently designed intervention programs. This grant is one of three issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Health from funds received in a Tobacco settlement. Other awarded institutions include the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Pittsburgh. Coordination across the three projects is anticipated in the service of more comprehensive identification of the mechanisms of the development of aggression and treatment response.

**The Workplace Practices and Daily Family Well-Being Project (David Almeida, P.I.) involves daily diary interviews for eight consecutive days with employees and one of their children aged 10-17 before and twelve months after a workplace intervention designed to reduce work-family conflict. The major goal of the intervention is to improve the health and well-being of employees, their families, and the workplace. Penn State is part of a larger, collaborate project with the University of Minnesota, Portland State/Michigan State, Harvard, Kaiser Permanente, and RTI. The six sites form the Work, Family, and Health Network (WFHN) and, collectively, the Network is designing, implementing, and evaluating the intervention, as well as disseminating the results to employers and interested stakeholders once the study is complete. The purpose of Penn State’s diary component is to study a subsample of employees and their children in more depth to test whether the effects of the intervention spill over to improve employees’ daily family processes and health and cross over to improve daily family processes and health in children. The Workplace Practices and Daily Family Well-Being project is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Using additional funding from the W.T. Grant Foundation, in a project directed by Susan McHale, we are expanding the assessment of family setting characteristics and youth well-being outcomes in child and employee home interviews. Specifically, we are testing whether and how the work setting intervention improves family setting temporal arrangements, family resources, and family social processes and whether and how the work setting intervention improves the psychological and physical health of employees' children. In addition, W.T. Grant funding allows graduate students to travel from their “home” site to another WFHN site for week-long “internship” experiences given that each center has unique expertise. The multi-disciplinarity of our network team provides a fertile ground for educating the next generation of work-family researchers and policy makers, and we see graduate education as a significant “product” of the WFHN’s activities.

**Promoting Positive Sibling Relationships in Middle Childhood Through the "Siblings are Special" Program (Mark Feinberg and Susan McHale, Co-PIs)

The "Siblings Are Special" program is a 12-session after school program for siblings in 2nd – 5th grade. Research suggests that siblings can be an important source of support and companionship for one another, but at the same time there may be a high degree of conflict and fighting between siblings. Indeed, many parents say that they are concerned about their children fighting with one another. The main goal of the "Siblings Are Special" program is to help siblings learn skills and attitudes that will lead to more support and cooperation and less conflict in sibling relationships. Ultimately, more positive sibling relationships are expected to help children develop better social skills, focus better at school, and sustain more positive relationships with peers. We expect that all of these changes will lead children to enter adolescence happier and better adjusted, and to show less negative and delinquent behaviors. In this ongoing pilot intervention study, 128 families were randomly assigned to attend the "Siblings Are Special" program or to be in a control condition. Mothers, fathers, and two siblings complete pre- and post-intervention assessments and a one-year follow up. Measures include self-reports and videotaped observations that assess family relationships and youth’s psychosocial adjustment.This project is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

**A Study of African American Marriage and Health (Chalandra M. Bryant, Principal Investigator).

This is a longitudinal study of African American marital relationships.
The primary goal of this research is to examine the effect of social, familial, economic, occupational, and psychological factors on marital and health outcomes, as study participants transition through the newlywed phase of their relationships. The first few years of marriage are critical time periods to study changes in marriage. By focusing on African Americans, we will be able to explore factors uniquely associated with African American marriage and health (mental/ physical). We will therefore be able to examine within group variability. This project is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

**Training Interdisciplinary Education Scientists (TIES) program (Tom Farmer and Karen Bierman, program co-directors)

This interdisciplinary doctoral training program in school-based educational research will prepare fellows with expertise in the development and evaluation of interventions aimed at promoting literacy and social/emotional competence in children and youth. TIES fellows are involved in coursework, seminars, summer institutes and research apprenticeships that expose them to cutting edge work in literacy and social and emotional learning and that underscore the developmental interplay between these two critical domains of school adjustment. The program’s core research training emphasizes cluster randomized trials and associated quantitative methods, management of the research process, grant writing, and applied research experiences.

The Infant Temperament Lab and Emotional Beginnings Project (Cynthia Stifter, Ph.D.). The Emotional Beginnings Project is one of several studies being conducted at the Infant Temperament Lab. This study investigatesthe development and outcomes of emotion regulation. Their hypothesis is that infants who do not develop effective regulatory strategies may have difficulty controlling behavior and thus be at greater risk for behavior problems.

Multilevel ARMA and Dynamic Models for the Longitudinal Study of Human Interactions (Michael J. Rovine, Principal Investigator, Penn State University). Time series methods are used to model phenomena as varied as patterns in the weather, fluctuations in the stock market, changes in populations, quality of industrial products, patterns of sleep, physiological characteristics such as heart rate, blood pressure, and brain wave activity, and the flight of the space shuttle. The use of these methods, which are so common in the areas of engineering and econometrics and which seem so naturally suited for application in the study of human interactions have been surprisingly overlooked in the developmental sciences. In this proposal we will adapt, extend, and, where necessary, develop new methods that will be particularly well-suited to developmental research and the study of human interactions. We intend to implement these models in ways that will make them easily accessible to developmental researchers studying human interaction. We will demonstrate the utility of these methods by analyzing data from the Infant and Child Temperament Study related to infant’s self regulation of emotion, and parent-infant interaction related to the parents ability to soothe a distressed child.

Family Relationships Project (Susan McHale, Ph.D. and Nan Crouter, Ph.D.)

 

Current Projects in the Prevention Research Center (Mark Greenberg, Ph.D., Celene Domitrovich, Ph.D., Ed Smith, Ph.D. ).

 

Capital Area Early Childhood Training Institute (Richard Fiene, Director) The link to the website is ecti.hbg.psu.edu/