My research interests are in the broad areas of socio-emotional development, developmental psychophysiology, and the neural basis of human emotion in infants and children. My research program has been directed towards understanding the origins and developmental course of extreme childhood shyness and social withdrawal. Current thinking suggests that the origins of shyness are linked to dysregulation of some sort in components of the fear system.
Fear is a highly conserved emotion that is seen across mammals.
It is the study of this emotion that has provided the most consistently replicated findings to date concerning the neural circuitry of emotion. Frontal brain electrical activity in shyness and sociability. Conceptual, biological, and behavioral distinctions among different categories of shy children. Oxford University Press. Effects of acute prednisone administration on memory, attention and emotion in healthy human adults.