studies & articles

The Blog

One of the many pleasures of being a professor was feeling the need to stay on top of the research in psychology. When I first learned about the half-life of knowledge, the literature typically said it was 3-5 years in technical fields. As a retired professor, I am still a member of the American Psychological Association and subscribe to a service that delivers abstracts and open-source articles from a large number of journals. As an alumna of Harvard, I also get information from them and I have the time to peruse multiple sources. This is a pleasure most professionals don’t have, especially if they value
work-life balance.

I still love research and, when I was asked to write the blog, I enthusiastically agreed. I try to select articles based on their relevance to practitioners, but also to capture both emerging themes and important corrections. I am hopeful that, moving forward, we will have ways to enable readers to easily engage in conversations with me and each other.

-Dr. Karen Nelson

Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Overcoming genetic propensity to poor reading

I am going to do two successive posts related to children’s reading. In this first one, Leve et al. (2022) published “The Potential of Children's Rearing Environment to Overcome Genetic Propensity for Low Reading Achievement” in Mind, Brain, and Education. Here’s the edited article:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

The cognitive impact of long COVID

Hannah Calkins (2022) published The cognitive impact of long COVID: What can psychologists do in the American Psychological Association’s “Six things psychologists are talking about.” I have edited the article because, though we all want COVID to go away, it isn’t cooperating. I found this information very helpful:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Racial justice allyship requires civil courage

Williams, Faber, Nepton & Ching, (2023) published “Racial Justice Allyship Requires Civil Courage: A behavioral prescription for moral growth and change” in American Psychologist. Here’s an edited impact statement and abstract:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Does anyone benefit from exclusionary discipline?

I have written before about discipline. Here, I summarize an article that adds to our understanding. Wang, Scanlon, & Del Toro (2023) published “Does Anyone Benefit from Exclusionary Discipline? An exploration on the direct and vicarious links between suspensions for minor infraction and adolescents’ academic achievement” in American Psychologist. I begin with the edited impact statement and abstract (I am omitting references for sake of brevity but all claims are well-documented):

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

New studies of ADHD

Here, I want to present four recent studies related to ADHD. The first, presented by Six Things Psychologists Are Talking About (2022) addresses “ADHD Medication Effects.” Here’s the abstract:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Solidarity with those who are different

Here, I summarize four articles related to understanding those different from the self. The first article, which is available in full text, has the longest summary: Scott, Ash, Immel, Liebeck, Devine & Shutts (2022) published “Engaging White Parents to Address Their White Children's Racial Biases in the Black-White Context” in Child Development. Here’s the edited article:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Perinatal influences on infant development

While we often ask about pregnancy and delivery in social histories, these studies suggest important elements of maternal-infant relationships that can have long-term impacts. Ruyak, Boursaw & Carcari Stone (2022) published “The Social Determinants of Perinatal Maternal Distress” in Journal of Rural Mental Health. Here’s an edited abstract:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Studies of measurement challenges

Here, I present four studies that focus on measurement of externalizing symptoms, dissociative identity disorder (DID), personality, and dementia. I don’t often address measurement, but it’s obviously critical to those who test individuals. Rivers, Winston-Lindeboom, Ruan-Iu, Atte, Tien & Diamond (2022) published “Validation of a Parent Report on Externalizing Symptoms Scale: A downward extension of the behavioral health screen” in School Psychology. Here’s an edited version of the impact statement and abstract.

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

More on executive function

As promised, I am following up the last article summary with a series of abstracts related to executive function. First, Moffett et al. (2022) published “Enrollment in Pre-K and Children's Social-Emotional and Executive Functioning Skills: To what extent are associations sustained across time?”

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Complex executive function over childhood

I’m going to do two entries on executive function. Here, I’m going to summarize an article at length. Next time, I will present multiple specific articles. McGuckian et al. (2023) published “Development of Complex Executive Function Over Childhood: Longitudinal growth curve modeling of performance on the Groton Maze Learning Task” in Child Development. Here’s an edited version of their article (for those of you who hate research design and statistics, I have put in bold critical findings):

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Anxiety, emotion, and cognition

Here, I address four studies, all addressing anxiety or social anxiety. Abrams (2022) published “What Neuroscience Tells Us About the Teenage Brain” in APA’s Six Things Psychologists are Talking About. I am editing the piece to focus on anxiety:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Four studies of trauma effects

Here, I present four recent studies related to trauma. First, Truss, Liao Siling, Phillips, Eastwood & Bendall (2022) published “Barriers to Young People Seeking Help for Trauma: A qualitative analysis of Internet forums” in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Here’s a slightly edited transcript:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Three studies of racial bias

Here, I present three studies that address interesting racial biases. First, Elenbaas Luken Raz, Ackerman & Kneeskern (2022) published “This kid looks like he has everything”: 3- to 11-year-old children’s concerns for fairness and social preferences when peers differ in social class and race in Child Development. Here’s the abstract:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Four studies of children and math

I am presenting studies of preschool, elementary, and teenage children, as well of one of parents’ attitudes. In the first study, Mou, Zhang & Hyde (2022) published “Directionality in the Interrelations Between Approximate Number, Verbal Number, and Mathematics in Preschool-Aged Children” in Child Development. Here’s the abstract:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Consequences of COVID

Increasingly, COVID research has focused on specific challenges. Here, I present information about four studies of its effects. First, we look at effects of COVID during the early years of the pandemic. First, Delagneau, Twilhaar, Testa, van Veen & Anderson (2022) published “Association Between Prenatal Maternal Anxiety and/or Stress and Offspring's Cognitive Functioning: A meta-analysis” in Child Development. Here are edited parts of the article:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Mom’s gut biome

Here, I present two studies of the gut biome. First, Eisenstadt published “How a Mother’s Microbiome Helps Shape Her Baby’s Development” on the Broad Institute (2022) on the Broad Institute website, citing Vatanen, Jabbar et al.

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

 Attachment through the lifespan

I am going to present four longitudinal studies of attachment with research addressing parental experience before becoming parents, attachment history and friendships, parent-adolescent relationships and successful peer and romantic relationships, and insecure attachment and personality pathology. Each study is nuanced and complex but well worth examining.

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

 Teachers and students

Here, I summarize four recent studies of experiences at school, focusing on teachers, students, diagnostic categories, and race. This is a longer than usual post, but the studies are related in dealing with expectations and biases. First, Chunta & DuPaul (2022) published “Educational Diagnostic Label and Teacher Self-efficacy: Impact on classroom intervention choice” in School Psychology. I’m going to start with the impact statement, then part of the abstract:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Four studies of emotion processing

First, Flechsenhar, Seitz, Bertsch & Herpertz (2022) published “The Association Between Psychopathology, Childhood Trauma, and Emotion Processing” in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. I was drawn to this study because of its mention of transdiagnostic psychopathologies. The idea seems to be that, because the DSM often yields poor diagnostic accuracy, it may be wiser to use core constructs that relate to multiple diagnoses. Here’s the slightly edited abstract:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Several studies of mindfulness

Here I am going to briefly describe six different articles on mindfulness, with a general one followed by specific research on the therapeutic bond, depression, Black clients, mood and psychosis symptoms in youth, and pain management. The first, distributed by APA in October 2019 is titled “Mindfulness meditation: A research-proven way to reduce stress.”

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