Research Associate Professor

Department of Psychology

University of Washington

Box 351525

Seattle, Washington  98195

Tel:  206-616-4015

Fax: 206-616-4060

Email: katzlf@u.washington.edu

My primary research interests are in examining familial factors related to risk and resilience in children's socioemotional development.  I am particularly interested in children's ability to regulate emotion in face of adverse environments and life events, and how parenting buffers children from negative developmental outcomes.  I see the family as an important source of influence shaping children's ability to regulate their emotions and teaching them how to develop successful, healthy relationships with others, including peers.  Consistent with a developmental psychopathology framework, my studies have included children who are functioning normally as well as those who exhibit conduct-problems and depression.

The major focus of my current efforts is in understanding the effects of domestic violence on children.  To do so, I collect observational, self-report and psychophysiological data from children while they interact with family members and play a challenging videogame with an unfamiliar peer.  This longitudinal study will address such issues as how children react to the stress of being exposed to domestic violence, whether parenting can reduce this risk, and whether there are changes in these processes across development.  Another adverse life event currently being investigated is children's adjustment following cancer treatment.

I am also conducting a study of unipolar depression in adolescents, examining (1) the aspects of emotional functioning that are disrupted in unipolar depression, and (2) family processes that influence the level of adolescent emotion dysregulation.  In this study, we use a multi-method assessment of key aspects of emotional functioning, such as behavior, experience and physiology.