Hello everyone! My name is Shannon, and I'm a developmental psychologist and researcher. I recently received my PhD from  the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. I will be starting a post-doc position with Dr. Vanessa LoBue at University of Rutgers - Newark in August 2025 working on an NSF-funded project with Co-PIs Dr. Lisa Oakes and Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. 

I received my BA in Psychology from UCLA in June 2016. After graduating with my Bachelor's degree, I worked in the UCLA Baby Lab with Dr. Scott P. Johnson for three years as the lab manager before joining Dr. Elizabeth Davis' UCR Emotion Regulation Lab.

My research interests focus on how context--particularly how aspects of language and culture--shapes children's emotoinal development. My work to date has sought to tackle this in various ways--some examples include: 

• Investigating Yucatec Maya children's emotional responding (self-reported feeling, displayed behavior, physiological reactivity) to emotionally evocative situations in the context of emotional norms regarding suppression

• Exploring how language background may influence perceptions of extralingual emotion words for which exist no direct English translation among college-aged individuals

• Disentangling whether aspects of linguistic or emotional complexity are more closely related to individuals' emotion regulation strategy use

• Exploring toddlers' visual attention to emotional facial configurations in the context of incongruent auditory information (e.g., tone of voice that doesn't match emotional tone of semantic content)

• And now--for my dissertation: exploring whether and how self-talk might facilitate children's frustration management

In my free time, I like to watch tv while I do chores, read sci-fi novels, and take care of the stray cats in my neighborhood!

I'm also extremely passionate about science communication--check out my professional instagram! @SMB_PHD