Education: Ph.D. University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1986
Research Interests: My research has focused on children’s peer relationships and applied social cognition. I’m interested in how children think about their social worlds, how their thinking develops with age, and how their social cognition affects their adjustment.
Over the years my students and I have investigated the social problem solving of children who exhibit poor peer relationships. We have also examined how children form social evaluations about peers who exhibit adjustment problems.
Most recently, we have investigated children’s perceptions of how peers attempt to cope with bullying behaviors and adolescents’ perceptions of suicide symptomatology. All of these projects share a focus on the way in which children form judgments about their social world and how these judgments impact their perceptions, emotions, and behavior.