Projects
Research in affective science, narrative meaning-making, and early life stress.
2026
Invited Talk (CME) · UF Health Palliative Care
Mechanisms of Dignity Therapy
Delivered a CME Accredited Lunch and Learn presentation for palliative care providers at UF Health discussing the mechanisms behind Dignity Therapy. The talk highlighted our recently published paper and ongoing research from the Life Story Lab regarding how narrative richness and empathy drive therapeutic impact.
Chapter · Handbook of Emotion Development
The Intersection of Language and Emotion Across Early Development
This chapter reviews how linguistic environments shape the way children learn to categorize and understand emotions. We synthesize research from infancy through adolescence to show that learning emotion words helps children transition from broad 'good vs. bad' feelings to specific categories like anger, sadness, or fear. My contribution involved integrating recent empirical findings to illustrate how acquiring these emotion concepts actively changes how children interpret both social cues and their own internal states.
Poster · Society for Affective Science
Childhood Maltreatment Predicts Perceived But Not Objective Sleep Disruption
This project originally tested whether beliefs about emotion malleability (PBEM) moderate the link between childhood maltreatment and adult sleep — they did not, across all PSQI components and Fitbit outcomes. The more interesting result emerged from the data itself: maltreatment strongly predicted self-reported sleep disturbances (r = .42, p < .001, N = 131) but showed no relationship with objectively measured sleep via Fitbit actigraphy (r = −.06, ns, N = 97). We formalized this dissociation as a subjective-objective discrepancy score and found that greater maltreatment history predicts a larger perception gap. Exploratory analyses suggest interoceptive emotional awareness explains part of this gap.
Accepted · Applied Cognitive Psychology
Latent Profiles of Life Stress and Resilience
This study applies Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to identify distinct patterns of life stress exposure and meaning-making within a Dignity Therapy sample. Using person-centered modeling in R and Mplus, we examined how profiles of early life stress, adult stress, religion, and social support relate to psychological outcomes. The study advances beyond cumulative stress indices by identifying heterogeneity in stress exposure and narrative integration.
2025
Invited Talk · Clinical and Health Psychology Seminar, UF
Dignity Therapy and Narrative Mechanisms
Delivered a 1-hour invited seminar synthesizing theoretical foundations, clinical applications, and ongoing research related to Dignity Therapy. The presentation integrated developmental, narrative, and affective perspectives on how individuals construct meaning around serious illness and life stress. I also discussed emerging quantitative findings and future directions examining narrative integration as a mechanism linking adversity to psychological outcomes.
Poster · Institute for Learning in Retirement
Dignity Therapy for Older Adults: Revisiting Early Life Stressors
This follow up project examined how individuals with varying levels of early life adversity differed in the types of stressors they discussed during Dignity Therapy and how they constructed meaning around those events. Rather than focusing solely on exposure, we analyzed patterns in the content of narratives, including whether stressors were self initiated or emerged in response to provider prompts. Using structured content coding and quantitative comparisons, we investigated how cumulative early adversity related to narrative emphasis.
2024
Poster · UF Cancer Institute Research Showcase
Dignity Therapy for Older Cancer Patients: The Role of Early Life Stressors
Building on prior coding work, this project examined how early life adversity is incorporated into narrative meaning in terminally ill cancer patients undergoing Dignity Therapy. Using a dataset of over 200 participants, I independently double coded transcripts and conducted quantitative analyses in R. We investigated whether the presence and severity of childhood stressors predicted differences in how individuals construct and interpret their life stories.
Project · Life Story Lab
Stressful Life Events in Dignity Therapy
I qualitatively analyzed over 140 Dignity Therapy transcripts to identify and classify stressful life events described by older adults with cancer. We developed a modified Social Readjustment Rating Scale to support systematic biographical coding, and I achieved strong interrater reliability (κ = .81). This project examined how individuals reference and contextualize life stressors within structured narrative interventions.
2023
Project · Cognition and Decision Modeling Lab
Eye Tracking Decision Making
This project examined decision making and reward processes using behavioral paradigms and eye tracking methodology. I assisted in participant coordination, experimental administration, and quantitative analysis in R. The study investigated how multiple weighted choices alter cognitive processing and choice behavior.
Software & Tools
Software Framework · In Development
EMA Forge
EMA Forge grew out of a gap I kept noticing: interoceptive measures like heartbeat detection tasks have historically required lab equipment and in-person sessions, which leaves the field unable to study interoception at ecological scale or inside EMA protocols. This treats interoception a a trait like measure rather than a state. EMA Forge is built around a web-based smartphone camera PPG to capture heartbeat data with no app download required. Around that core, EMA Forge provides tooling to design, deploy, and manage full EMA studies that mix survey and physiological measures. This combination allows for IRB ease as well as bringing interoceptive measures like the Phase Adjustment Task and other heartbeat based tasks to a broader population.
Status: Internal testing phase. Documentation and layout preview available below.
Status: Internal testing phase. Documentation and layout preview available below.