Research Interests Physiological and neural correlates of infant-mother attachment Emotion-related dynamics of parent-child interactions Maternal speech prosody and children's stress regulation Parental socialization of emotion Family-friend linkages and children's social-emotional competence Dr. McElwain advances understanding of the dynamic early-life interactions between parents and children that shape children’s developing abilities to regulate stress. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines neuroscience, psychophysiology, linguistics, and developmental psychology. Through investigating stress regulation during early development, she aims to promote healthy parent-child relationships and children’s long-term social and emotional well-being.