Emotional Competence, Poverty, and Mental Health

描述（由申请人提供）：本指导研究科学家奖（K01）将使发展心理学家候选人成为发展精神病理学的独立研究人员，重点研究低收入儿童和家庭的情绪加工。职业目标是解释情感能力与入学准备之间的关系，并确定影响这一服务不足人群情感能力发展的因素，重点是预防的影响。研究的目的是描述低收入学前和幼儿园学龄儿童在转学期间的情绪能力，并研究学前情绪能力是否能预测幼儿园入学准备，包括社会能力、心理健康功能（内化和外化行为）、学术知识和学校技能。本研究采用教师情绪调节报告、访谈评估儿童情绪知识和理解、现场观察儿童情绪表达、情绪调节和社会参与等方法，对120名低收入学龄前儿童的情绪能力进行了短期纵向研究。入学准备将在儿童过渡到幼儿园后的多方法，多信息跟踪评估。候选人将与发展精神病理学研究专家Ronald Seller博士、情感能力专家（Susanne Denham博士）、低收入家庭儿童入学准备专家（David Arnold博士）以及此类工作的临床意义专家（Susan Dickstein博士）一起完成严格的培训。培训目标是学习新的统计技能（例如，层次线性建模）；在设计高风险儿童和家庭的纵向研究以及在学校环境中进行方法上的深入研究方面获得专门知识；并获得观测研究方面的技术培训（师从罗杰·贝克曼博士、黛博拉·卡帕尔迪博士和卡罗尔·伊泽德博士）。通过这样的专业培训，候选人将为未来的研究做好准备，以测试情感能力的综合发展模型，检查家庭影响，并使用复杂的方法（如微观分析）来调查情感能力的个体差异对低收入儿童心理健康和入学准备的意义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This Mentored Research Scientist Award (K01) will enable the candidate, a developmental psychologist, to become an independent researcher in developmental psychopathology, with a focus on emotion processing in low-income children and families. Career goals are to explain how emotional competence relates to readiness for school and to identify factors that influence the development of emotional competence in this underserved population, with an emphasis on implications for prevention. Research goals are to describe emotional competence in low-income preschool and kindergarten-age children during the transition to school and to examine whether preschool emotional competence predicts kindergarten school readiness, including social competence, mental health functioning (internalizing and externalizing behavior), academic knowledge and school skills. The proposed short-term longitudinal study involves assessing 120 low-income preschool children's emotional competence via teacher reports of emotion regulation, interview assessments of child emotion knowledge and understanding, and live observations of emotional expression, regulation, and social engagement in Head Start classroom settings. School readiness will be assessed in a multi-method, multi-informant follow-up after children transition to kindergarten. The candidate will complete rigorous training with Ronald Seller, Ph.D., an expert in developmental psychopathology research, and co-mentors with expertise in emotional competence (Susanne Denham, Ph.D.), low-income children's school readiness (David Arnold, Ph.D.), and clinical implications of such work (Susan Dickstein, Ph.D.). Training goals are to learn new statistical skills (e.g., Hierarchical Linear Modeling); gain expertise both in designing longitudinal studies with high-risk children and families and in conducting methodologically intensive research in school settings; and acquire technical training in observational research (from Roger Bakeman, Ph.D., Deborah Capaldi, Ph.D., and Carroll Izard, Ph.D.). With such specialized training, the candidate will be prepared in future research to test a comprehensive developmental model of emotional competence, examining family influences and using sophisticated methods (e.g., microanalytic analyses) to investigate the significance of individual differences in emotional competence for low-income children's mental health and school readiness.