Emma Pitt

Exploring Environmental Influences in the Relationship between Parent Anxiety and Child Emotion Regulation

Emma Pitt profile-picture photograph

Emma Pitt

PhD Student
School of Psychological Sciences

Profile

Emma Pitt completed her Undergraduate and Honours degree in Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington. She is currently deferred from the Clinical Psychology programme at the university to pursue her PhD. Throughout her various work and volunteer roles in child and youth spaces, Emma has cultivated a passion for child development. As such, Emma’s research looks at how parent anxiety influences the development of emotion regulation in their preschool children. Emma is particularly interested in the mechanisms of this relationship, specifically looking at how parent anxiety affects certain parenting processes, such as how parents respond to their children’s negative emotions. Despite anxiety becoming increasingly more common in our communities, it is still heavily under-researched among parents. This research therefore represents a novel endeavour to better understand how we can support whānau when parents are experiencing anxiety.

Qualifications

Bachelor of Science with Honours in Psychology [BSc(Hons)]

Research Interests

Child development, mental health, parenting, emotion regulation, emotion socialisation, quantitative methods

PhD topic

Exploring Environmental Influences in the Relationship between Parent Anxiety and Child Emotion Regulation

Supervisor/s

Dr Rachel Low

A/Prof Mele Taumoepeau

Labs

Emotions, Love, and Motivation (ELMo) Lab
https://elmolabvuw.wordpress.com/