Sex, temperament, and family context: how the interaction of early factors differentially predict adolescent alcohol use and are mediated by proximal adolescent factors.

Professor Strauman's research focuses on the psychological and neurobiological processes that enable self-regulation, conceptualized in terms of a cognitive/motivational perspective, as well as the relation between self-regulation and affect. Particular areas of emphasis include: (1) conceptualizing self-regulation in terms of brain/behavior motivational systems; (2) the role of self-regulatory cognitive processes in vulnerability to depression and other disorders; (3) the impact of treatments for depression, such as psychotherapy and medication, on self-regulatory function and dysfunction in depression; (4) how normative and non-normative socialization patterns influence the development of self-regulatory systems; (5) the contributory roles of self-regulation, affect, and psychopathology in determining immunologically-mediated susceptibility to illness; (6) development of novel multi-component treatments for depression targeting self-regulatory dysfunction; (7) utilization of brain imaging techniques to test hypotheses concerning self-regulation, including the nature and function of hypothetical regulatory systems and characterizing the breakdowns in self-regulation that lead to and accompany depression.

Research Interests: Research interests include (1) The development of children's ideas and beliefs about the social environment. This includes an interest in the underlying cognitive processes that mediate social reasoning skills, the relationship between parental beliefs and values and children's social perceptions social competence and social rule acquisition and its relationship to social conformity. (2) The relationships between adult values and motivations and depressive states. Also, how social-cognitive biases pertinent to affective disorders develop and are socialized by parental norms and family systems properties. (3) Psychological and social concomitants of obesity, overeating, self-restrictive eating, anorexia and bulimia. Particularly concerned with the relationship between cultural and sex-role norms pertaining to women and the emergence of eating disorders.

Clinical Interests: Community-school consultation, group psychotherapy, psycho- and "socio"-therapy with troubled and troublesome children and their families, individual adult psychotherapy and therapeutic strategies for working with distressed eating-disordered clients.