Children born preterm are at increased risk for neurodevelopmental, cognitive, social, emotional, and adaptive difficulties.  However, there is a lot of variability in how children learn and develop that is not explained simply by prematurity. Some children do great, while others struggle more.  Moreover, we know that having a child born preterm can be stressful for parents and impact their own mental health as well as their interactions with their child.  Thus, we are particularly interested in how parent-child interactions and parent functioning interact with how children are developing. 

This longitudinal study of children born very preterm (<30 weeks) from birth to 9/10 was collected by the WUNDER lab at Washington University St. Louis, and is done in collaboration with Dr. Cynthia Rogers at the WUSTL School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry.  We have coded the parent-child interaction data from these families, and are currently conducting data analysis.

Baby FACES is also known as the Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (Baby FACES).  This is a longitudinal study of children and families who participated in Early Head Start from ages 1-3.  This data was collected by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the US Department of Health and Human Services, and Mathematica Policy Research in 89 Early Head Start Programs across the country. 

​We are using this rich sample of families to examine parenting interactions, maternal and family functioning, the home environment, social risk, and the children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development and functioning.   This project is used for data analysis, and is a great potential data source for graduate student projects.

​See the Baby FACES website for more information.

This project examines how and when children in the state of Missouri receive Autism diagnoses. Research on Autism largely neglects of the intersectional aspects of Autism, including race, gender, and intellectual ability (Diemer, Gerstein, & Regester, 2022).

This study is conducted using Missouri HealthNet data, in collaboration with the Center for Health Policy at University of Missouri School of Medicine. The purpose of this research study is to examine if there are patterns in diagnostic age, prior diagnoses, comorbidities, providers seen, therapies, and prescriptions which might reflect health disparities or systemic inequalities in Autism.

Dr. Gerstein is a consultant on the Early Life Adversity, Biological Embedding (eLABE) and Risk for Developmental Precursors of Mental Disorders by Washington University School of Medicine condcuted by Dr. Joan Luby and colleagues. eLABE examines how experiences in pregnancy and early life adversity affect both maternal and child wellbeing, child brain development, emotion regulation, and other child outcomes. Our lab is particularly interested in the role of parent-child interactions, which are hypothesized to be important mediators of development. Dr. Gerstein is responsible for the organizing and coding the parent-child interaction data at child ages 1-3. We have recently finished Year 1 coding, are beginning Year 2 coding and will be starting initial data analysis soon.

PRAMS, the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, is a population-based surveillance study organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and health departments. PRAMS is a national, site-specific (Individualized per state needs), population-based survey on maternal attitudes and experiences before, during, and shortly after pregnancy. This dataset is available from the CDC with specifically approved applications. We have received approval to begin using this data in our lab, and it is a great resource for graduate student-driven projects.

Please see the PRAMS website for more information about this project.

​This project addresses gaps in the literature around understanding the role of emotion socialization by fathers. Data were collected on fathers of children ages 6-10 using online data collection methods (MTurk, Reddit), and include information on father emotion regulation, child emotion regulation, parenting stress, masculinity, trauma experiences, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This project was originally collected as part of Dr. Katy Cherry's dissertation, and is available for further data analysis and projects.

This study is examining emotion dysregulation in autistic youth (ages 6-11). The main goals of the study are to validate the Emotion Dysregulation Inventory (EDI) in a racially diverse sample and examine how emotion dysregulation is associated with core autism characteristics and other related behaviors.

This study is currently collecting data through the Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research (SPARK) initiative.