Director
Brenda Volling
Director
Dr. Volling is the Lois Wladis Hoffman Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the social and emotional development of infants, parent-infant interaction, and the role of family relationships in facilitating children’s developmental outcomes. She has conducted extensive research on the role of fathers for infant development and is one of the leading experts on the development of infant-father attachment relationships. She is the Principal Investigator of the Family Transitions Study (FTS), a longitudinal investigation of changes in the firstborn’s adjustment and family functioning after the birth of a second child, which has received funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Fetzer Foundation.
Post Doc
Lauren Bader
Post doc
Lauren Bader is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Toulouse, France. Prior to this appointment, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Developmental Psychology working with Professors Brenda Volling and Richard Gonzales in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan, and continues to work on several outstanding projects. She received her Ph.D. in Child and Family Studies from the University of Tennessee in 2017. Her research broadly investigates mother-infant attachment relationships and social-emotional development in infancy. She has explored these issues in cultural contexts and is currently looking at the link between attachment relationships and cortisol reactivity among both infants and mothers across the first year of life.
Lin Tan
Post Doc
Lin is currently a Research Scientist in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Systems at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. Previously, Lin was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with Drs. Brenda Volling and Richard Gonzalez at the University of Michigan, and she continues to work on several outstanding projects. She received her Ph.D. in Human Development and M.A. in Data Analysis and Applied Statistics at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on the role of family processes in children’s social-emotional development. She also explores how the cultural similarities and differences in emotional beliefs relate to parental socialization practices.
She recently published a paper using examining change in young children's emotional understanding using cohort-sequential analysis:
Graduate Students
Myriam Al Bcherraoui
Graduate Student
Myriam is a first-year graduate student starting Fall 2022 in the Developmental Psychology Ph.D. program. She received her BA in Psychology from the Lebanese American University in May 2022. Myriam is interested in examining how parent-child relationships, specifically father-child relationships, support children’s social and emotional development and prevent negative behavioral outcomes, especially during the transition into siblinghood. In particular, Myriam is interested in exploring the underlying family dynamics that influence a child's behavioral and emotional adjustment to a newborn sibling, and the consequent formation of a healthy sibling bond.
Yanghyun Park
Graduate Student
Yanghyun is a graduate student in the Joint Ph.D. Program in Social Work and Developmental Psychology. She received her Master of Science in Social Work from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2020. Her research interests include 1) parent-child attachment and its long-term impact on children's development, 2) parenting styles and children’s psychological and behavioral outcomes, and 3) strategies to prevent child maltreatment.