Congratulations to our undergraduate, Jax Cantwell, for receiving an acceptance from Iowa State's Master of Clinical Mental Health program for Fall 2026!
Congratulations to our post bacc, Ashley Engstrom, for receiving an acceptance to Penn State University's Clinical Psychology Child Track PhD program where she will continue to work in the FAM Lab as a graduate student starting in Fall 2026!
Kaitlyn Ventre presented her research findings at the Penn State University 2025 Undergraduate Research Exhibition.
Kaitlyn presented a poster on how neighborhood deprivation and crime exposure predict internalizing and externalizing symptoms in early childhood.
She received the Gerard A. Hauser Top Presenter Category for best overall poster!
Excellent job and congratulations!
Gracie Cain presented her research findings at the Penn State University Psi Chi annual meeting.
She presented a poster on how maternal depressive symptoms relate to children’s eating behaviors during early childhood.
Great work!
Naz Dinc, Alex Petryczenko, Cassandra Franke, Rebecca Fang, Jordan Yerger, and Ashley Engstrom presented their research findings at the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) annual meeting, which took place April 9th to April 11th.
Ashley presented a poster on how childhood trauma and current neighborhood crime exposure interact to predict reward responsiveness among women with and without depression histories.
Jordan presented a poster on the role of neighborhood disadvantage in children’s response to dyadic positive affect intervention for depressed mothers and their offspring.
Rebecca presented a poster on the moderating role of neural reward reactivity on the prospective effect of maternal depression in relation to increases in externalizing symptoms in early childhood.
Naz presented a poster on the interplay of brooding rumination and neural reward responsiveness in the prospective prediction of depressive symptoms among women.
Cassandra presented a poster on the role of neural responses to negative stimuli in predicting depression in at-risk adolescents.
Alex presented a talk on maternal depression, emotion socialization, and respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA) reactivity patterns in children.
Fantastic job everyone!
Emilia Cárdenas published a paper in Anxiety, Stress & Coping examining stress and coping processes in youth.
Emili Cárdenas was selected as a fellow in the CHIPS (Child Intervention, Prevention, and Services) training consortium, funded by NIMH, supporting early career researchers in child and adolescent intervention and prevention science.
This past weekend our lab team hosted a booth at Fall Fest in downtown State College. Our team worked with local families to make bracelets and educate the community about the our current research projects. Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by!
Naz Dinc, Alex Petryczenko, Jordan Yerger, and Ashley Engstrom presented their research findings at the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) annual meeting, which took place April 3rd to April 5th.
Ashley presented a poster on the interplay of early life adversity and maternal depression on social reward responsiveness in youth.
Jordan presented a poster on the role of neighborhood disadvantage on depression prevention response in children of depressed mothers.
Naz presented a poster on the attenuated cognitive control network (ACC) as a mechanism in mother-daughter intergenerational transmission of depression.
Alex presented a poster on maternal responses to distress and RSA synchrony in low and high-risk mother-child dyads.
Great job!
Caley Lane was accepted into a Clinical Psychology doctoral program at the University of Toledo!!
Christine Roberts was also accepted into a Clinical Psychology doctoral program at Case Western Reserve University!
Congratulations to Caley and Christine!
FAM Lab members participated in the stand up for science rally in Pittsburg, PA!
Dr. Burkhouse was invited to join the editorial board for Development and Psychopathology.
Congratulations Dr. Burkhouse!
Our research assistants, Christine and Caley, are presenting posters at the ABCT (Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies) Convention, which takes place November 14–17 in Philadelphia.
Christine is presenting a poster on the interaction between neural reward responsiveness and socioeconomic status in the prediction of depression in children.
Caley is presenting a poster on electrocortical reactivity to emotional faces in mother-daughter dyads, and how maternal depression and rumination moderate these associations.
Good luck to them both! Stay tuned for updates!
We are currently in the process of setting up our lab here at Penn State! In November we plan to start taking participants for a brand-new multi-site study with Vanderbilt University examining the impact of maternal depression on positive emotion processing and mental health outcomes for youth.
We are also setting up an existing study from Nationwide Children's hospital in Ohio examining how individual differences in emotion regulation patterns are implicated in risk for depression in children and adolescents.
Our research assistant Chuck Kingston is in the process of submitting his manuscript titled 'The interplay of rumination and error-related brain activity in the prospective prediction of depressive symptoms among youth,’ to the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology for their Rumination, Cognitive Performance, and Depressive Symptoms special issue. He and his co-authors found that ERN (an ERP tested with Flanker that indexes cognitive error processing) moderates the relationship between rumination and twelve-month depression symptoms in a sample of adolescents.
Great job Chuck!
Graduate student Maria Granros began her Clinical Psychology Internship at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.
Graduate student Michelle Sheena successfully defended her dissertation entitled, “Examining Reward Reactivity using EEG Between Mother-Child Dyads With and Without a History of Depression.”
Congrats to Maria and Michelle!
