Research Interests and Publications:

Dr. Ablow's research interests are in the area of social development and developmental psychopathology, with an emphasis on understanding how psychobiological and family factors combine to influence individual adaptation. Specifically, her work focuses on understanding how the psychological and physiological properties of emotional arousal and styles of emotional regulation in one sub-system of the family shape similar processes in other familial sub-systems. From a developmental psychopathology and family research perspective, she has examined how emotional arousal and the regulation of arousal in the marital relationship can "spill-over" to and shape children's psychological and emotional development. An important aspect of this work has been the development of ways to assess how young children perceive and make sense of their family environment. More recently, her work incorporates biologically-based perspectives to further examine inter-personal emotional regulation and child development. In current research, she is exploring the relation between parental internal working models of attachment, physiological arousal, and behavioral sensitivity in response to infant emotional communication (e.g., attachment cues).

Selected Publications:

Ablow, J.C. (in press). When parents conflict or disengage: Understanding the links between marital distress and children's adaptation to kindergarten. Monographs in Parenting.

Ablow, J.C., Measelle, J.R., Kraemer, H.C., Harrington, R., Luby, J., Smider, N., Dierker, L., Clark, V., Dubika, B., Heffelfinger, A., Essex,M.J., Kupfer, D.J. (1999). The MacArthur three-city outcome study: Evaluating multi-informant measures of young children's symptomatology. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 38, 1580-1590

Measelle, J.R., Ablow, J.C., Cowan, P.A., Cowan, C.P. (1998). Assessing young children's views of their academic, social, and emotional lives: An evaluation of the Self-Perception Scales of the Berkeley Puppet Interview. Child Development, 69, 1556-1576.