Current Lab Members

Dr. Susanne Denham

Professor of Psychology

Susanne Denham, Ph.D., of George Mason University, is an Applied Developmental Psychologist with particular expertise in the social and emotional development of children.  After graduating Summa Cum Laude from Western Maryland College, Dr. Denham went on to receive her M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University and her doctorate from the University of Maryland Baltimore County.  Apart from using her experience as a mother of three children to initiate and explore her research on emotion and development in children, Dr. Denham has also used her 11 year hands-on experience as a school psychologist to aid in her research.  She has authored articles and two books on varying topics, from emotional and social competence in preschoolers and older children, to developmental psychopathology.  These projects have been supported by the National Institutes of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, and the W.T. Grant Foundation.  Dr. Denham has also studied the development of forgiveness in children with the support of ‘A Campaign for Forgiveness Research’ of the John Templeton Foundation. 

Dr. Susanne Denham's Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Hideko Hamada Bassett

Hideko Hamada Bassett was born and raised in Japan. She received M.S. in Psychology at the University of Memphis, and Ph.D in Applied Developmental Psychology at George Mason University. Her main interest is children's social and emotional development.

Kate Zinsser

Kate is a doctoral student in the ADP program. She graduated from Smith College in Northampton, MA in 2005 and is currently the Lab Coordinator in Dr. Denham's Child Development Lab. Kate's research centers around development within dynamic emotional contexts. She is particularly excited about using advanced modeling techniques and mixed methodologies to capture change over time in families and classrooms and understand how such change impacts children's social emotional development. Kate's interest in development grew from her clinical work with substance abusing adolescents in a wilderness-based therapy program and her research in the field of criminology. Kate's dissertation will focus on understanding how teachers perceive themselves as socializers of social emotional learning in preschool and how those perceptions relate to their provision of emotional support in the classroom.

Kate Zinsser's Curriculum Vitae

Craig S. Bailey

Graduate Student

Craig is a doctoral student originally from Eastern South Dakota. As an undergraduate, he worked for five years in childcare developing a passion for fostering positive development in children. Having earned a B.S. in Psychology from South Dakota State University, Craig is now happily living in Northern Virginia. With his passion for research, he aspires to investigate preschoolers' development of self-regulation, making a point to focus on caregiver-child interactions and resulting social-emotional skills.

Craig Bailey's Curriculum Vitae

Naomi Watanabe

Graduate Student

Naomi is a doctoral student in the ADP program. She is originally from Tottori, Japan and earned a B.A. in Psychology at the University of South Florida and M.A. at GMU. Through her work experience at the Social Skills Workshop for Children with Disabilities and cultural experience living in the US, she developed her interests in children's social-emotional development, language development, social skills, parenting, early childhood education, and the influence of cultural context on them.

Naomi Watanabe's Curriculum Vitae

Jessica Steed

Graduate Student

Jessica is a Master's student originally from Rockville, Maryland. She graduated from University of Maryland Baltimore County in May 2007 with a B.A. in Psychology.  After graduation, she worked as a preschool teacher, and for two years with Dr. Denham.  Her current research interests include social-emotional development, school readiness, and feeding disorders. 

Elizabeth Shewark

Graduate Student

Elizabeth Shewark is originally from Long Island, New York. Elizabeth graduated from the University of Mary Washington in 2010 with a B.S. in Psychology. She is currently in her second year in the Applied Developmental Psychology masters program. Elizabeth's research interest include forgiveness, intervention work, and social-emotional development in children and adolescents, focusing specifically on their social-emotional development in the school context. In addition, she is interested in how the child's relationships (peers, parents, and teachers) affect their developmental outcomes.

Kristina Herndon

Graduate Student

Kristina was born and raised in Northern Virginia.  Right now she is an undergraduate at George Mason University working towards earning her B.S. in Psychology.  She is applying to Developmental and Clinical Graduate programs to pursue her interest of working with children.  Her research interests include children’s emotion regulation and children with learning disabilities.

Sammi Plourde

Graduate Student

I earned my bachelors of science from Virginia Tech in 2011.  I majored in psychology and philosophy and worked with Dr. Julie Dunsmore in her social development lab looking at prosocial behaviors in 9 and 10 year olds.  My research interests consist of how peers affect each other's education and social and emotional competence.

Nicole Fettig

Graduate Student

Nicole is a second year Masters student in the ADP program. Her undergraduate work at East Carolina University and fellowship at the National Institutes of Health/NICHD centered around her passion for understanding how stress and early life experience influence developmental trajectories. Her research interests include temperament, emotional and social development, and the physiological processes involved in stress reactivity. Specifically, she is interested in exploring individual differences in child temperament, stress reactivity, and how they relate to the development of socioemotional competencies in children.

Nicole Fettig's Curriculum Vitae

Grace Howarth

Graduate Student

Grace is in her third year of doctoral study in the Applied Developmental Psychology program. Grace earned her B.S. in Psychology from Virginia Tech (2007) where her interest in child development research was formed. Following graduation from Virginia Tech, Grace earned a Masters in Teaching in Early Childhood Developmental Risk (2009) from the University of Virginia. Grace's research interests include temperamental contributions to social and emotional development and self-regulatory behaviors in infants and young children. She is further interested in exploring brain-behavior relations utilizing EEG.

Grace Howarth's Curriculum Vitae

Sandy Salguero

Undergraduate Student

Sandy was born and raised in Fairfax, Virginia. She is currently an undergraduate student at George Mason University earning her B.A. in Psychology. She is in the Psychology Honors Program, and is working with Dr. Denham on her Honors Thesis. Her current research interests focus on social-emotional competence in Hispanic children.

David Ferrier

Graduate Student

David is originally from Fort Fairfield, ME but has lived in New York state for the past 5 years. He is a Master's student in the School Psychology Program at GMU. He graduated from Elmira College in 2010 with a B.A. in Psychology. While at Elmira, he worked with Dr. Benjamin Lovett on the development of a moralization scale and looked at testing accommodations in a sample of college students with either a documented learning disability or has been diagnosed with ADHD. His current research involves the adaptation of social-emotional assessments for use on tablet computers as well as the effects of social emotional learning in school contexts.

David Ferrier's Curriculum Vitae