Ruth received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Notre Dame. Her research interests focus on factors involved in the development of child emotion, self-regulation, and other social-emotional capacities. Specifically, she studies the effects of early family processes, including emotion socialization behaviors during parent-child interactions and their implications for child emotion and self-regulation, particularly within adverse family environments and contexts of trauma. In addition, she is interested in how research can be applied to inform interventions aimed at ameliorating negative developmental trajectories in children and families who experience adversity.