Research Interests

• Emotional and Biological Risk Factors for Anxiety Problems in Early Life
• Neurodevelopmental Correlates of Risk for Psychopathology
• Identifying Normative and Atypical Developmental Trajectories of Emotion Development
• Gene-environment Interplay in the Development of Risk for Anxiety Problems
• Transactional mechanisms of risk for anxiety in parents and offspring
• Plasticity of the maternal brain during the perinatal period

Recent Publications

Mistry-Patel, S. & Brooker, R.J. (2023). Socioeconomic status as a moderator of neural and parental pathways to anxiety risk in early childhood. Developmental Psychology, 59(5), 801-812. doi:10.1037/dev0001461

 Brooker, R.J., Mistry, S., Kiel, E.J., Liu, S., VanLieshout, R.J., Schmidt, L.A., & John-Henderson, N. (2023). Infant negative reactivity modulates trajectories of maternal mental health symptoms during the pre- to postpartum period. Journal of Affective Disorders Reports, 11, 100481. doi: 10.1016/j.jadr.2023.100481

 Kling, J.L., Mistry-Patel, S., Peoples, S.G., Caldera, D.R., & Brooker, R.J. (2023) Prenatal maternal depression predicts neural maturation and negative emotion and emotion in infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 70, 101802. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101802

Brooker, R.J., Mistry-Patel, S., Kling, J.L., & Howe, H.A. (2021). Deriving within-person estimates of delta-beta coupling: A novel measure for identifying individual differences in emotion and neural function in childhood. Developmental Psychobiology, 63(6), e22172. doi: 10.1002/dev.22172

Nyman, T., Pegg, S., Kiel, E.J., Mistry, S., Schmall, L.J., & Brooker, R.J. (2020). Perceived social support moderates neural reactivity to emotionally valanced stimuli during pregnancy. Psychophysiology, 57, e13647. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13647

Brooker, R.J., Kiel, E.J., MacNamara, A., Nyman, T., John-Henderson, N., Schmidt, L.A., & VanLieshout, R.A. (2020). Maternal neural reactivity during pregnancy predicts infant temperament. Infancy, 15, 46-66. doi: 10.1111/infa.12316

Brooker, R.J., Moore, M.N., Van Hulle, C.A., Beekman, C.R., Begnoche, J.P., Lemery-Chalfant, K., & Goldsmith, H.H. (2020). Attentional control explains covariation between symptoms of ADHD and anxiety during adolescence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 30, 126-141. doi: 10.1111/jora.12506

Brooker, R.J., Bates, J.E., Buss, K.A., Canen, M.J., Dennis-Tiwary, T.A., Gatzke-Kopp, L., Hoyniak, C., Klein, D.,  Kujawa, A., Lahat, A., Lamm, C., Moser, J.S., Peterson, I.T., Tang, A., Woltering, S., & Schmidt, L.A. (2019).  Conducting event related potential (ERP) research with young children: A review of components, special considerations and recommendations for research on cognition and emotion. Journal of Psychophysiology, 34, 137-158. doi: 10.1027/0269-8803/a000243

Affiliated Research Cluster

Personality Processes, & Affective Science. Developmental psychology; emotional and biological risk factors for anxiety and psychopathology in early life.