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Graduate Areas:

• Social-Health
• Clinical - Child

Does Dr. Thompson plan to recruit a doctoral student for the next incoming class?

Research Interests:

My research integrates developmental psychopathology and biopsychosocial perspectives to investigate children’s socioemotional development within the family context. My three primary aims include:

1. Investigating how family dynamics (e.g., interparental conflict, parenting, family instability) impact children’s socioemotional development in ways that lead to increased risk for psychopathology or more adaptive adjustment.
2. Exploring the role of sleep in relation to the family environment and children’s socioemotional development.
3. Identifying individual (e.g., temperament, attention biases) and contextual (e.g., SES, neighborhood safety) sources of variability in children's adjustment in the family context. 

To address these aims, my research is theory-driven (e.g., emotional security theory, family systems theory) and integrates multiple levels of analysis (e.g., family and child behavior, sleep, eye-tracking), diverse methodologies (e.g., observational, narrative, survey), and perspectives from multiple informants (e.g., caregivers, children, teachers), often leveraging longitudinal data to capture developmental processes over time. 

Publications:

• Davies, P. T., Cao, V. T., Hendrickson, M. V., & Thompson, M. J. (2025). Lessons learned from witnessing constructive interparental conflict and the beneficial implications for children. Developmental Psychology. 
• Thompson, M. J., McWood, L. M., Buckhalt, J. A., & El-Sheikh, M. (2024). From counting dollars to counting sheep: Exploring simultaneous change in economic well-being and sleep among African American adolescents. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 1–10.&�Բ�����;
• Thompson, M. J., Platts, C. R., & Davies, P. T. (2024). Parent-child boundary dissolution and children’s psychological difficulties: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 150(7), 873–919. 
• Kelly, R. J., Thompson, M. J., & El-Sheikh, M. (2024). Exposure to parental interpartner conflict in adolescence predicts sleep problems in emerging adulthood. Sleep Health, 10(5), 576–582. 
• Thompson, M. J., Hinnant, J. B., Erath, S. A., & El-Sheikh, M. (2024). The legacy of harsh parenting: Enduring and sleeper effects on trajectories of externalizing and internalizing symptoms. Developmental Psychology, 60(8), 1482–1499. 
• Thompson, M. J., Gillis, B., Hinnant, B., Erath, S., Buckhalt, J., & El-Sheikh, M. (2024). Trajectories of sleep duration, quality, and variability from childhood to adolescence: Downstream effects on mental health. SLEEP, 47(8), zsae112. 
• Hinnant, J. B., Jager, J., Rauer, A. J., & Thompson, M. J. (2024). Developmental sensitivity, stasis, and disturbance: Linking concepts to analytic methods using impulsivity and alcohol use. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 34(4), 1172–1190. [Special Issue: “Celebrating the Legacy and Work of John Schulenberg: Taking the Long View on Adolescence”]. 
• Russotti, J., Platts, C., Sturge-Apple, M. L., Davies, P. T., & Thompson, M. J. (2024). A process model of parental executive functioning as a spillover mechanism linking interparental conflict and parenting difficulties across parenting domains. Developmental Psychology, 60(6), 1052–1065. 
• Thompson, M. J., Davies, P. T., & Sturge-Apple, M. L. (2023). Understanding heterogeneity in pathways between interparental conflict and children’s involvement: Affect-biased attention. Child Development, 94(2), 497–511. 
• Thompson, M. J., Davies, P. T., Coe, J. L., & Sturge-Apple, M. L. (2022). Family origins of distinct forms of children’s involvement in interparental conflict. Journal of Family Psychology, 36(7), 1142–1153.