FPG Post-Doctoral Fellows

PhD in Social Welfare from the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley in 2006

Research Experience and Interests:

Allison’s research interests center on issues of poverty, welfare policy, child care, and early childhood mental health and well being, with a particular focus on rural communities. Allison’s dissertation involved extensive research with families on welfare, their children, and their child care providers in rural Northern California. She examined how these families searched for and selected child care arrangements for their children to allow and accommodate their participation in the work force. In addition, she assessed the quality of child care these children received. Recently she has been studying issues of economic transitions and family work conditions and their effects on children in rural communities. In addition, Allison is interested in rural neighborhoods and geographic isolation, in particular how neighborhoods are best conceptualized in rural communities and how these constructs impact children and their families.

Work as a Post-Doctoral Fellow:

Allison will continue to work on the Family Life Project with Lynne Vernon-Feagans, as well as with Nan Crouter at Penn State. Her projects will include examining the FLP child care data with a research team and developing a neighborhood effects and family well-being proposal to submit for grant funding. She also has active collaborations with colleagues at the Cecil Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC and the UNC School of Social Work.

Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Temple University, 2008

Mentors: Dina Castro, Ellen Peisner-Feinberg, and Peg Burchinal

Research Experience and Interests:
Doré’s research centers on understanding how family context shapes development and mental health during early childhood, with the goal of enhancing child and family functioning. Her activities have focused on school readiness skills, such as emergent literacy and socioemotional competence, among low-income and ethnic and language minority children. Furthermore, she has examined how family processes (e.g., parenting beliefs and behaviors, parental psychological resources) influence young children’s developmental competencies and family experiences. Finally, Doré is also interested in how to make interventions and services more accessible for children and families among both community-based and clinic-referred populations. In summary, Doré’s areas of interest include early childhood development, school readiness, parenting and family processes, parental psychological health, child disruptive behavior disorders, and access to services, with a special emphasis on low-income and ethnic minority populations.

Work as a Postdoctoral Fellow at FPG:
Doré is working on a study with Drs. Castro and Peisner-Feinberg examining child care choices among Latino families. Doré’s contribution to this project will involve investigating how parental psychological resources and access to social support relate to child care choices and parent perceptions about their children’s early learning needs. Doré’s activities also involve preparing manuscripts through secondary analysis of existing longitudinal data sets.

Ph.D. in Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008

Research Experience and Interests:
Gary’s primary research interests include language pragmatics in school-age children with intellectual disability and autism, perseveration in children, and the effects of autism status on language and communication in known genetic disorders. As a doctoral student at UNC, he was a research assistant on the Carolina Communication Project at FPG. The Carolina Communication Project studies the speech, language, and communication skills of boys with fragile X syndrome and boys with Down syndrome. His dissertation focused on verbal perseveration.

Work as a Post-Doctoral Fellow:
Gary continues to work on the Carolina Communication Project with Joanne Roberts. His research involves comparing the pragmatic and speech production skills of boys with fragile X with and without autism spectrum disorder, boys with Down syndrome, and boys with autism spectrum disorder without fragile X, as well as examining the child factors that relate to these skills. Gary’s specific projects will include examining repair strategies, topic maintenance skills, perseveration, speech intelligibility, and mother-child interactions of the boys in the study.

Ph.D. in Human Development and Psychological Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2008

Research Experience and Interests:
Erica’s primary research interests include contextual influences in early childhood with a particular focus on African American families and children. Erica’s research activities have focused on distal and proximal processes affecting children and their parents with an emphasis on concepts of race, ethnicity, and economic hardship. She has examined the contribution of parental employment during nonstandard work hours to children’s early language environment and expressive language outcomes. Erica has also explored racial discrimination as a psychological stressor for African American parents and the family environment.

Work as a Post-Doctoral Fellow:
Erica is working with Lynne Vernon-Feagans and Peg Burchinal on factors that contribute to childhood obesity in low-income populations in previously existing national datasets. Erica will also extend her previous research findings regarding parental work schedules to academic and health related outcomes for preschool and school-age children.