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Department of Psychology Gartstein Temperament Lab

Personnel

The Gartstein Temperament Lab meets regularly to collaborate on research efforts and publications.  Our former lab members have gone on to positions in academia and the private sector.  We additionally work closely with remote research teams in the United States and beyond – for more information, see our Partners page.

Our current lab team includes:

Masha Gartstein

Masha Gartstein

Dr. Gartstein’s research addresses temperament development, primarily in early childhood. The emphasis on identifying typical trajectories of growth for reactive and regulatory tendencies is coupled with efforts to discern risk and protective factors relevant to the emergence of psychopathology.  Dr. Gartstein has examined a spectrum of environmental factors contributing to temperament attributes “coming online”, including parental temperament, parenting/parent-child interactions, and cultural influences. More recently, her work has focused on biological underpinnings of temperament, examining prenatal effects and postnatal physiological correlates. Current studies are addressing effects associated with maternal physiological and psychosocial stress during pregnancy, including epigenetic mechanisms. The Gartstein laboratory has also been collecting infant electroencephalogram (EEG) data reflecting brain activity associated with reactive and regulatory aspects of temperament. Another project wherein genomic parameters of infant microbiome are identified and linked with temperament attributes is currently underway. This research is conducted in collaboration with several WSU laboratories, as well as multiple domestic and international partners.

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Alyssa Neumann

Alyssa Neumann
As a sixth-year graduate student, I am completing my predoctoral internship at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota in Minneapolis, with a focus in pediatric psychology and neuropsychological assessment. My research interests relate to developmental outcomes of circumstances in the prenatal environment (e.g., maternal mental health symptoms, use of psychoactive medication or drugs during pregnancy) or perinatal period (e.g., preterm birth, or other conditions resulting in NICU care). I am especially interested in how such early developmental events shape individual differences and the role of parent-infant interactions in this “shaping.”

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Allegra X. Campagna

Allegra Campagna

I am a fourth-year student in the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program at Washington State University. My research through the Gartstein Infant Temperament Laboratory is primarily focused on early individual differences, parent-child interactions, maternal well-being, and electroencephalography (EEG). I graduated from Arizona State University with bachelors degrees in Psychology and Biology in 2017. Apart from academics, I enjoy running, poetry, and spending time with my many pets. I would like a career as a pediatric neuropsychologist and part of an interdisciplinary team in a medical setting. Ideally, I would like my work to entail a combination of assessment, short-term solution-focused therapy, community outreach, and research. I also hope to supervise students regarding both clinical practice and research.

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Jennifer Mattera

Jennifer Mattera

I graduated from Providence College in 2014 with a double major in Biology and Psychology.  After graduating, I worked as a research assistant for over three years at Brown University where I studied the differential effects of prenatal exposure to depression and antidepressants on developmental outcomes during infancy and early childhood.  I joined the Infant Temperament Lab in 2018 and am responsible for coordinating the Pregnancy, Health and Motherhood Study.  I am specifically interested in studying how stressors during pregnancy, such as depression and anxiety, relate to socio-emotional functioning in young children via biological mechanisms.  I hope to apply these research interests to treating at-risk children exhibiting behavioral and emotional dysregulation in order to prevent these difficulties from developing into more severe psychological disorders.

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Kara Brown

Kara Brown

I graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2019 with a B.S. in psychology and a minor in sociology. I joined the Gartstein Infant Temperament Lab in the fall of 2019 when I started graduate school in clinical psychology. Currently, I am the project coordinator for the infant EEG study. My research interest mainly includes the investigation of neurobiological underpinnings of temperament using electroencephalography (EEG) to better understand emotion regulation and its impact on development. I am also interested in the global neural developmental that takes place in the first year of life. I hope to continue exploring these topics in neuroscience as a researcher and professor in my future career.

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Christie Pham

Christie Pham

I graduated from UC San Diego in 2017 with a B.S. in Cognitive Science specializing in Neuroscience and a minor in Business. After graduating, I worked as a study coordinator at the UC San Diego Autism Center of Excellence for two years, then as a study coordinator at the UC Irvine Thrive Lab for one year. I am joining the Gartstein Infant Temperament Lab as a first year Clinical Psychology graduate student and am particularly interested in examining differences in the expression of temperament cross-culturally and how these differences influence developmental trajectories. I am also interested in examining intergenerational transmission of risk and resilience through parent-child interactions and how such interactions influence the development of temperament. In the future, I hope to apply my research in informing/improving family-focused interventions as I work as a professor and researcher.

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Victoria Jones

Victoria Jones

I graduated from East Tennessee State University in May 2020 with a B.S in psychology and a minor in sociology, and I have since started WSU’s Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program working in the Gartstein Infant Temperament Lab. My research interests include adverse childhood experiences, temperament, parent-child interactions, stress, and resilience. I hope to apply my research experience in the future and pursue a career as a child psychologist.

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Graduate Student Alumni

 

Eric Desmarais, Ph.D.

Eric Desmarais successfully completed his internship  at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Natalia Potapova, Ph.D.

 

 

Natalia Potapova is currently a Psychology Fellow at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, MN.

 

 

 

 

 

Nora Erickson, Ph.D.

 

 

Nora Erickson is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Hennepin Healthcare Mother Baby Program and Affiliate of the University of Minnesota Department of Psychiatry.

 

 

 

 

 

Syndney Iverson, Ph.D.

 

 

Sydney Iverson is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist practicing in The Seattle Clinic; Clinical Instructor and Supervisor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington.

 

 

 

 

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Project Coordinator Alumna

Kaitlyn Campbell

Kaitlyn Campbell graduated from the University of Idaho in 2019 with B.S. in psychology and a minor in pre-health studies. She joined the Infant Temperament Lab in fall 2018 to better understand how to do research and ended up falling in love with it. As a result, she is now attending Temple University, and is in her first year of the Developmental Psychology doctoral program, working with Dr. Peter Marshall. Her research interests include self-regulation, proprioception, and outcomes resulting from atypical prenatal environments. She loved meeting so many different people and learning so much working in this lab!

 

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