ejkf26@mizzou.edu

I am broadly interested in understanding childhood anxiety from a developmental psychopathology perspective. Specifically, how do anxiety-prone (i.e., temperamentally inhibited) children and their parents interact in ways that exacerbate risk for or protect against anxiety development? My research has focused on how inhibited children elicit protective behavior from their parents, particularly when parents are very attuned to their children's fearfulness. When parents accurately anticipate their children's distress in new situations, they respond with increased protection. This protective behavior, in turn, predicts later anxiety and social withdrawal. In future studies I plan to address how cognitive, behavioral, and physiological emotion reactivity and regulation in fearful children and their parents influence this anxious cycle.

Kiel, E. J., & Buss, K. A. (in press). Maternal expectations for toddlers’ responses to novelty: Relations of maternal internalizing symptoms and parenting dimensions to expectations and accuracy of expectations. Parenting: Science and Practice.

Kiel, E. J., & Buss, K. A. (in press). Maternal accuracy and behavior in anticipating children’s responses to novelty: Relations to fearful temperament and implications for anxiety development. Social Development.

Kiel, E.J., & Buss, K.A. (2006). Maternal accuracy in predicting toddlers’ behaviors and associations with toddlers’ fearful temperament. Child Development, 77, 355-370.

Buss, K.A., & Kiel, E.J. (2004) Comparison of sadness, anger, and fear facial expressions when toddlers took at their mothers. Child Development, 75, 1761-1773.