I work as an associate professor at the Department of Psychology, Education and Child Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam, specialized in clinical child and family studies.

I study moral development of children within their families, with a special focus on lying: how and why do parents lie to their own children and does parental lying affect child development? In addition, I explore how early social relationships and interactions shape the regulation of cognitive and emotional processes that help people to function according to social norms and standards in society. I am fascinated by the question of why some children struggle with self-regulation more so than others and propose that these regulation differences can be vital to explain the intergenerational patterns we observe in psychiatric problems, problem behaviors, and socio-economic adversities.

Overall, my work contributes to a better understanding of the social origins of children’s regulation of behavior, emotions, and cognition. I study these processes in an ecologically valid way to better understand children’s ability to socially adapt in naturalistic settings. I am specialized in using observational paradigms and coding schemes to study the interaction and (dyadic) regulation of parents and children.