PEOPLE

Principal Investigator

Kristin H. Lagattuta is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis. She received a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan. Dr. Lagattuta is a developmental scientist who studies children’s and adults’ reasoning about connections between the mind and emotion, how children and adults attend to and interpret emotional information, parent versus child evaluations of children’s mental health, as well as further aspects of social cognition, including morality, social categorization, and beliefs about common ground versus diversity in how people will think, feel, and act. In addition to examining normative development, she also explores sources of individual differences in attention and reasoning. She is the editor of the 2014 book, Children and emotion: New insights into developmental affective science, and her empirical work appears in Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Developmental Science, Emotion, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Psychological Science. Dr. Lagattuta served as Associate Editor at Developmental Psychology, and she serves on the editorial boards of Affective Science, Child Development, Emotion, and Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. She received the Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Excellence in Teaching Award as well the UC Davis Distinguished Teaching Award for Undergraduate Teaching. Dr. Lagattuta is also very active in higher education leadership and faculty governance, serving as Vice Chair and then Chair of the UC Davis College of Letters and Science Faculty Executive Committee (2015-2017) and then Vice Chair and then Chair of the UC Davis Academic Senate (2017-2020). From 2020 to 2022 she served as the Faculty Advisor to the Provost on Closing Student Opportunity Gaps. She is currently the Chair of the Psychology Department (2022-).

Graduate Students

Maritza Miramontes is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. She earned a B.A. in Psychology and minors in Spanish and Cognitive Science at the University of California, Merced. Maritza works with Dr. Lagattuta investigating parents' versus children's perspectives on their relationship quality, including relations to socio-emotional outcomes. She plans to pursue interests in children’s theory of mind, emotion beliefs, emotion understanding, and emotion regulation; the impact of culture and acculturation on these developmental processes; and mental health outcomes. Beyond her research, Maritza is interested in helping support under-represented populations develop the skills they need to pursue higher education.

Lucy Stowe is a second year Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. She earned a B.A. in Psychology from Boston University. She investigates how children's expectation management strategies help improve their emotion wellbeing, as well as how notions of fairness develop across childhood, and how children's experiences with inequality mediate emotional outcomes. She wants to further understand how children’s emotions inform their beliefs about what is fair or unfair, and how both temporary and chronic experiences of inequality mediate their moral judgments. She currently serves as the President of the Psychology Student Association at UC Davis, and is involved with Access Grads, a mentorship program on campus that pairs undergraduates in psychology and cognitive science with graduate students.

Maia Southwick is an incoming Ph.D. student to the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. She earned a B.S. in Psychology and Health, Society, and Policy along with minors in Economics and Sociology from the University of Utah. Her research goal is to investigate how intra-individual patterns of moral reasoning and judgment change across social context and major developmental periods (e.g., childhood and adolescence). Further study on this topic can inform how conceptions of ourselves and others as moral persons may vary across context and time. During her first year at UC Davis, Maia hopes to settle into her roles as a student, teaching assistant, researcher, and colleague.

Maria Calderon is a first year Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. She earned a B.S. in Psychobiology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She investigates how beliefs about emotions influence self-regulation and how close others influence emotion regulation, as well as how affective forecasting is related to perceptions of emotion controllability. Additionally, she is interested in exploring how students’ previous life experiences, expectations, and emotions shape their well-being and academic outcomes in their first year of college. Maria is eager to continue mentoring students and plans to get involved in programs aimed at supporting underrepresented students.

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Phoebe Wandell is a fourth year student at UC Davis studying Human Development. After graduating, she plans to pursue a graduate program in Child Development. She is primarily interested in children’s socio-emotional development, specifically the development of emotion understanding and self-awareness. She hopes to study how emotion understanding can influence children’s reactions to adverse experiences.

Luke Roncevich is a 3rd year student majoring in Psychology with a Human Development minor. He is also a student athlete at Davis, from Southern California. He aspires to get into a graduate program for Psychology after completing his undergraduate degree. He wants to research social conformity in infants and how closely they will mirror their parents.

Mirabella Hofland is going into her third year at UC Davis, studying Cognitive Science. She is also planning on pursuing a minor in Human Development, as she is interested in developmental psychology, especially social emotional development. Mirabella is also very interested in exploring new developments in artificial intelligence and what implications they may have in how the mind is studied and defined.

Sonakshi Khanna (she/her) is a recent graduate and honors thesis student from the University of California, Davis with a degree in Cognitive Neuroscience. As a first-generation immigrant and public health minor, she hopes to immerse herself in interdisciplinary learning and a cross-cultural perspective. Sonakshi is interested in exploring uncertainty and affective processing in children and adults, as well as the formation of motivations and beliefs.