Wayne State University

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MPSI

Developmental Transitions

Research Focus

  • Infant Mental Health
  • Early Parent-Child Relationships
  • Early Childhood Education
  • Psychosocial Maturation in Adolescence

Projects

  • Recognizing, Reflecting and Responding to Infant/Toddler Cues: A Parent-Teacher Intervention to Support Social-Emotional Development through Caregiver Mindfulness and Sensitivity: Ann Stacks, PI. A $2.47 million grant to support a five-year program of professional development, coaching and interventions designed to improve the responsiveness and interactions between teachers, parents and young students, in partnerships with Michigan State and the University of Michigan.
  • Michigan Opioid State Targeted Response and Evaluation: Stella Resko, PI. Three one-year grants from the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services, totaling, $1.5 million, to assist with Michigan's federally funded response to the opioid crisis and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions.
  • Scaling Up: A Multi-site Trial of e-SBI for Alcohol Use in Pregnancy: Steve Ondersma, PI. A four-year grant of $2.6 million from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism to expand the testing of a brief computer-delivered intervention.
  • Child Care Access Means Parents in School: Anna Miller, PI. The U.S. Department of Education awarded $659,927 to Early Childhood Centers at MPSI and the College of Education Early Childhood Centers to provide tuition for preschoolers of low-income parents attending Wayne State University. Affordable, quality child care encourages parents to stay in college and earn a degree.
  • Pediatric Motivational mHealth Parent Training for Child Disruptive Behaviors: Lucy McGoron, PI. A four-year, $533,151 K01 award from the National Institute of Mental Health to use internet-based technology to identify disruptive behavior in children and motivate parent engagement. The program provides evidence-based training tailored to each parent's needs.
  • Accelerating Collaborative, Cumulative and Open Intervention Science with an e-Intervention Authoring Platform: Steve Ondersma, PI. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging Bioengineering awarded $1.5 million over four years to significantly enhance existing research software so scientists can more easily collaborate to develop powerful interventions for mobile devices.
  • Virtual Reality to Assess the Interpersonal Dynamics of Violence Exposure: Valerie Simon, PI. Adolescents exposed to interpersonal violence often experience negative consequences. This study uses virtual reality technology to measure the betrayal, stigmatization and powerlessness theorized to impact these consequences. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development granted $423,827 over two years.
  • Great Start Readiness Program: Anna Miller, PI. These yearly grants from the Michigan Department of Education are shared between both Early Childhood Centers on campus. MPSI's Center received $232,000 over two years to provide free tuition for qualified four-year-olds at-risk of school failure.
  • Promoting High Quality Early Childhood Education in Detroit: Hilary Ratner, PI. The Kresge Foundation awarded $163,629 to support the Early Childhood Consortium created by the College of Education and MPSI to provide professional development, coaching and other resources at no cost to early childhood centers that belong to the consortium.
  • Optimizing SBI Implementation for High Risk Alcohol Use in Women of Childbearing Age: Steve Ondersma, PI. Two grants totaling $235,939 and covering two years from Henry Ford Health Systems to refine and optimize the delivery of computer-based interventions that reduce alcohol use.
  • The Interpersonal Dynamics of Violence Exposure and Adolescents' Autonomic Regulation: Valerie Simon, PI. A two-year grant of $179,215 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
  • Evaluation of the Family Assistance for Renaissance Men Program: Carolyn Dayton, PI. Family Assistance for Renaissance Men (FARM) is a Detroit grassroots organization to empower unemployed urban men to take a more active role in their children's lives. The McGregor Fund provided $100,000 over two years to create and conduct a program evaluation, and supervise the program's social worker. 
  • African American Adolescents' Daily Academic Engagement: Olivenne Skinner, PI. A National Science Foundation grant of $75,000 to show how classroom experiences relate to academic engagement in math and English. Students' daily diaries will document how engagement varies across classroom experiences, youth characteristics, gender and subject, and how these variations connect to academic outcomes like grades.
  • Virtual Reality to Assess the Interpersonal Dynamics of Violence Exposure: Valerie Simon, PI. Adolescents exposed to interpersonal violence often experience negative consequences. This study uses virtual reality technology to measure the betrayal, stigmatization and powerlessness theorized to impact these consequences. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development granted $432,827 over two years. 
  • Pediatric Motivational mHealth Parent Training for Child Disruptive Behaviors: Lucy McGoron, PI. A four-year, $533,000 K01 award from the National Institute of Mental Health to use internet-based technology to identify disruptive behavior in children and motivate parent engagement. The program provides evidence-based training tailored to each parent's needs. 
  • Recognizing, Reflecting and Responding to Infant/Toddler Cues: Parent-Teacher Intervention to Support Social-Emotional Development through Caregiver Mindfulness and Sensitivity: Ann Stacks, PI. A $2.47 million grant to support a five-year program of professional development, coaching and interventions designed to improve the responsiveness and interactions between teachers, parents and young students. The Michigan team of WSU, Michigan State and the University of Michigan is one of four sites funded across the country as a cooperative agreement with the Administration for Children and Families, of the US Dept. of Health & Human Services.
  • Trajectories of Teacher Stress: Coping and Prior Exposure to Trauma: Ann Stacks, Co-I. A two-year subcontract under a $242,488 Michigan State University grant to better understand teacher stress, trauma exposure and coping mechanisms. Dr. Stacks will act as liaison to incorporate data and analysis from the Recognizing, Reflecting and Responding to Infant/Toddler Cues study for which she is PI.
  • Promoting High Quality Early Childhood Education in Detroit: Hilary Marusak, PI, Anna Miller, and Beverly Weathington. The Kresge Foundation awarded $803,000 over three years to support three projects of the Early Childhood Consortium created by the College of Education and MPSI. Funding greatly expanded the leadership, professional development, web-based videos, training, coaching and other resources provided at no cost to early childhood centers that are part of the consortium. 
  • Visual Thinking Strategies Training: Anna Miller, M.Ed, is Principal Investigator on this project funded by the PNC Foundation to continue professional development, staff training and field trips to the Detroit Institute of Art to assess implementation of the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) adjunct curriculum for preschool children in WSU's two Early Childhood Centers. VTS uses guided discussions of select works of art to improve children's verbal, cognitive, observational and critical thinking skills.
  • Strengthening Mental Health Service Utilization to Reduce Negative Consequences of Child Sexual Abuse: Valerie Simon leads an NIH-funded project to identify barriers to and increase utilization of no-cost mental health services among families with a newly discovered case of child sexual abuse. At present, few families take advantage of currently available early intervention resources, putting children at greater long-term risk for poor mental health outcomes following the initial trauma.
  • The Emergence of Sexual Risk among Sexually Abused Adolescent Females: Valerie Simon is studying the impact of child sexual abuse on the sexual development of girls. The aim of the study funded by two grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Development is to develop more effective risk-reduction programs for these adolescents. 
  • Coaching for Excellence in Early Childhood Education Practice in Detroit: Anna Miller, M.Ed., and Sharon Elliott (College of Education) lead this project, with collaborator John Hannigan, implementing on-site expert coaching/mentoring to assist early childhood educators in bringing high-quality teaching practices to their classrooms. This pilot project is funded by the PNC Foundation and is assessing the feasibility and impact of the coaching/mentoring.
  • Baby on Board! The Wayne State University Early Parenting Study: Carolyn Dayton is the principle investigator of an early parenting study funded by the Silberman Foundation. This study examines the influence of bio-psycho-social risk and resilience factors on the parent-child relationship during pregnancy and across the first four postnatal months of development. A central aim is to understand the dynamics of the emerging relationship to inform early intervention services for over-burdened families with an emphasis on engaging and providing infant mental health services to fathers. 
  • Development of Social and Romantic Relationships: Julie Wargo Aikins leads a project examining child and adolescent interpersonal processes and their impact on developmental outcomes. The research focuses on social relationships, including those with parents, peers, and romantic partners, given their marked influence on youths' trajectories of development. The work is guided by a developmental psychopathology framework and attachment theory, and has laid the ground-work for research that studies how these relationships exacerbate or buffer youth from developmental risk.
  • Teens at Risk: Prenatal Cocaine and Postnatal Challenges: John Hannigan is one of the Co-Investigators working with Virginia Delaney-Black, M.D. (Principal Investigator; Pediatrics) on a longitudinal and multidisciplinary project assessing the impact of prenatal cocaine and alcohol exposure, as well as family and community risk factors, on at-risk behaviors including substance use/abuse and sexual behavior in older adolescents and young adults. Wide-ranging measures of neurobehavioral outcome, physiological responses to stressors, and social-emotional regulation are integral to this project. The National Institute on Drug Abuse funded this project.
  • Attachment in Children in Military Families: In this research Julie Wargo Aikins examines how an attachment disruption during early childhood, specifically separation from parents due to combat deployment, may influence children's achievement. This project examines how the remaining parent's psychological health, stress, and provision of support may mitigate the risks associated with separation. By viewing parental deployment through lenses of developmental challenge and socio-emotional buffers, the findings may inform our understanding of other developmental risks.
  • Parental Reactions During Pregnancy and Postnatal periods Linked to Early Outcomes (PURPLE): Ann Stacks and Marjorie Beeghly are following up families from Dr. Thomason's fetal brain functional connectivity study to better understand how maternal reflective functioning, parent-infant interactions, mental health and demographic risk impact infant development.