THE FAMILY AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT LAB @ THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI
  • Welcome
  • Research
  • Participate
    • Information for Participants
    • Enrollment Complete: Participate in a Study! (Non-Mothers)
    • Participate in the Attachment, Cognition, Emotion (ACE) Study!
    • Participate in the Perception of Infant Cues (PICs) study!
  • Publications
  • ASA Coding
  • People
  • Join the Lab

Welcome to the Family & Child Development Lab!

Welcome to the Family and Child Development Laboratory! The lab is under the direction of Ashley M. Groh, Ph.D., and was founded in 2014. We are located at the University of Missouri in McReynolds Hall and are affiliated with the Department of Psychological Sciences. This website is intended to provide parents and researchers with information about the scientific activities of our lab. Please take a look around to learn more about who we are and what we do.

Research conducted in our lab focuses on the developmental origins of the quality of parent-child relationships and legacy of these relationships for social and emotional development. We apply a biopsychosocial perspective to understand the mechanisms by which early interpersonal experiences are carried forward across development and generations. Current projects in the lab focus on the: (1) intergenerational transmission of parent-child attachment relationships, (2) developmental significance of early caregiving experiences for social and emotional development, and (3) construction of representations of attachment in infancy and adulthood. The goals of our research are to provide insight into the ways in which early interpersonal experiences might serve as an organizing force in development across the lifespan and to identify the mechanisms by which adversity with close relationships might be overcome.
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Commitment to Our Community

The Family & Child Development Lab is committed to respecting and including our community of participants to ensure representation in our research. This is a shared responsibility that requires a conscious effort across research and education within and outside of our lab. We value the uniqueness of every individual, and we are committed to consistently working toward creating the conditions that will support and expand a more representative community and shared understanding.

To create a more comprehensive understanding of close relationships across the lifespan, our laboratory engages in research with ethnically, racially, and socio-economically diverse families and children (e.g., PROMISE Study, ACE Study; Haltigan et al., 2019; Groh et al., 2019). Moreover, an important goal of our meta-analytic research is to identify critical gaps in research on close relationships as they pertain to representation (e.g., racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic backgrounds; e.g., Borowski et al., 2021; Penner et al., 2023).

Our lab welcomes individuals representing a broad range of groups, including but not limited to, age, disability, ethnicity, gender, language, national origin, race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, as well as socioeconomic status, urban/rural background, and veteran status.

We do not tolerate discrimination or any indication of intolerance towards others. We hold ourselves, and each other, accountable to ensure integrity and respect in all that we do. We are also committed to understanding and working against any biases we have.
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  • Welcome
  • Research
  • Participate
    • Information for Participants
    • Enrollment Complete: Participate in a Study! (Non-Mothers)
    • Participate in the Attachment, Cognition, Emotion (ACE) Study!
    • Participate in the Perception of Infant Cues (PICs) study!
  • Publications
  • ASA Coding
  • People
  • Join the Lab