My research suggests that there are important behavioral, cognitive, and physiological processes that underlie maladaptive emotion regulation related to risk for depression: 1) Behaviorally, individuals at risk for depression show difficulty sustaining the positive outcomes of emotion regulation, and they fall back to feelings of sadness. 2) Cognitively, individuals who tend to ruminate in response to distress show difficulty inhibiting negative and self-relevant information and those who are trained in inhibition subsequently report less rumination and improved cognitive abilities. 3) Physiologically, individuals at risk for depression who experience more negative life events show less parasympathetic flexibility in response to distress. Furthermore, increased reactivity to distress among those individuals predict worse emotional outcomes. 

I am interested in the mechanisms that underlie depression as well as develop interventions for individuals at risk. In my lab we examine the beneficial effects of a novel training on physiological measures and also on regulation reported in daily life. Combining laboratory-and Ecological Momentary Assessment approaches will inform about the generalizability of lab-based findings. 

My work also raise important questions in relation to how emotion regulation changes over distinct developmental periods and what are the cognitive and physiological changes that assist this change. I see adolescence as an important developmental stage during which to examine risk factors for the development of depression, because rates of depressive disorders increase dramatically in adolescence