Research
Current Projects
Treating Communal music Pilot paper forthcoming
First Tones
A reward-based intervention, built by applying a mechanism established experimentally: communal music acts as a social reward, repairing positive affect and strengthening belonging after social ostracism (Scientific Reports, 2025). A randomized controlled trial (communal music vs. communal drawing) now tests whether that mechanism helps preschoolers facing familial adversity feel and function better, and why — measuring mental and behavioral health, reward responses via child-friendly fNIRS imaging, and sense of belonging through a new observation tool. Behavioral findings from the pilot are coming out soon.
Assessing Eating & weight AN/BN paper forthcoming
Portion-Size Estimation in Eating Disorders
Portion perception is foundational to intake regulation: a portion must be perceived as large before it can trigger regulatory behavior. The Estimation Error Index (EEI) makes it measurable — a normalized index separating true perceptual distortion from scale-use artifacts. In anorexia and bulimia nervosa the distortion is magnitude-dependent, appearing specifically at large portions; the work now extends to binge-eating disorder, to culturally-relevant versions of the task, and into bariatric psychological assessment, where the EEI answers a gap in measuring eating psychopathology. A paper on the EEI in AN/BN is coming out soon.
Understanding Eating & weight Cross-cultural Analysis underway
Food Insecurity and Eating Disorders
Using the Healthy Minds Survey (n ≈ 1,876 South American students at U.S. universities, 2020–2025), this project asks how food insecurity — measured with the Hunger Vital Sign screener — relates to eating psychopathology and mental health in a population that is at once immigrant, young, and economically at risk.
Understanding Cross-cultural Paper forthcoming
Global Trauma Network
A 13-country collaboration (n ≈ 1,787) examining how child maltreatment and cultural social norms interact to shape mental health — depression, anxiety, trauma, resilience, and post-traumatic growth — across the US, Canada, Georgia, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Macau, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, and the UK. A paper is coming out soon.
Assessing Cross-cultural Paper forthcoming
The “Several Days” Problem in Depression Screening (PHQ-9)
Using the U.S. Healthy Minds Survey, this measurement work shows that the shared response option “several days” on the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 screeners spans a wider severity range for students who speak a non-English language at home — semantic non-equivalence of a translated anchor. Replicated across survey waves and echoing his finding in the PHQ-9 Brazilian-Portuguese version. A paper is coming out soon.