Faculty Investigator
Preschoolers Emotional Resilience: Family Processes, Temperament, and Neurobiological Correlates
This project adopts an integrative approach to the study of basic emotions in children, with a focus on documenting how children construct knowledge about different emotions, experience emotion and develop patterns of emotional response in the context of close relationships such as those found in the family setting. This approach is crucial to understanding the interpersonal factors that foster resilience in humans. The project is a sub-component of two larger studies that examine attachment experiences and brain functioning as well as family, media and community factors that predict obesity and health behaviors in preschool children. Eighty preschool-age children enrolled in local child care center s will complete lab procedures that assess cognitive and emotional organization, temperament characteristics, and emotional recognition and understanding along with EEG data collection for neuroelectric assessment.
Biography:
Dr. Kelly Bost is an Associate Professor of Applied Human Development in the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include parent-child interaction; children's peer relationships; children's social networks and social competence; and parent-child narrative styles. She examines the relationship contexts through which children co-construct and develop socially adaptive or maladaptive behavior. Dr. Bost also studies neighborhood ecology factors in relation to parental beliefs about child-rearing, the social ecologies of children and parents, and children's interpersonal functioning to determine how resources and constraints within neighborhood and community structures influence family functioning. Dr. Bost holds a PhD in Family and Child Development from Auburn University.
Contact:
Phone: 217-244-6673
Fax: 217-333-9061
