Peggy Keller, PhD
Department of Psychology |
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Research Interests |
| Dr. Keller’s research is in the field of Developmental Psychopathology, with general interests in the effects of family stress on child mental health. Her primary areas of research include the effects of parental problem drinking and parental depression on emotional and behavioral problems in middle childhood. Her research examines marital conflict, poor parenting, and child emotional insecurity as processes involved these effects. She also has particular interests in child physiological stress response and sleep as mediators and moderators of the link between family stress and child mental health problems. The overall goals of her program of research are to identify how family stress affects child self-regulation, and the implications of poor self-regulation for the development of emotional and behavioral problems in children. |
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Current Projects |
| Family Risk and Child HPA Activity |
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| Dr. Keller is currently conducting a study of family risk (parental problem drinking, marital aggression, and poor parenting) and children’s hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity. The HPA axis is one of the primary biological systems that responds to stress, and its activity can be measured noninvasively via cortisol (a stress hormone) levels in saliva. The impact of family risk on child HPA activity requires additional study to determine why some children exhibit abnormally high but others exhibit abnormally low levels of cortisol. We will examine interactions with other biological stress-response systems (parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system), as well as psychological coping, as explanations for these differences. Further, this study will provide the first known examination of the effects of parental problem drinking on child HPA activity. A grant from the Center for Research on Violence Against Women has provided supplemental funds for the examination of parental HPA axis and autonomic nervous system activity as risk factors for women’s development of problem drinking in response to marital aggression. |
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| Parental Problem Drinking and Child Sleep |
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| Dr. Keller has funding pending for a study of the influence of parental problem drinking on children’s sleep quality, amount, and schedule. Recent research indicates that the family may play an important role in the development of child sleep-wake regulation, but there have been no studies of parental problem drinking. Children’s sleep will be monitored for one week using an actigraph, a watch-like device that is worn on the wrist and measures physical activity. We will be recruiting 250 families with children between the ages of 6 and 11 for this study. Family relationship problems will be considered as a possible reason why parental problem drinking may prevent children from getting enough sleep, and children’s parasympathetic nervous system activity will be examined as a moderator of relations. We believe that children who are prone to high levels of physiological arousal in response to family conflict will be at greater risk for sleep disruptions. |
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| Sleep and Romantic Relationships |
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| Dr. Keller is currently running a study on the relations between conflict, attachment, and satisfaction in romantic relationships, and sleep. She is collaborating with Dr. Nathan DeWall for this study. Participants are college undergraduates, and they wear an actigraph (sleep monitor) for one week. Also during this week, they complete daily questionnaires about how much time they spend with their partner, their satisfaction in their relationship that day, whether they had conflict and what types of behaviors were exhibited during the conflict, and their propensity for aggression within the relationship. We hypothesize that days in which there is greater conflict and poor relationship functioning will be followed by more restless nights. We also suspect that inadequate sleep will be a risk factor for conflict and relationship problems the next day. |
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