Rosemarie DiBiase, PhD

Program Director, Applied Developmental Psychology

Education

PhD, Temple University
MA, Temple University
BA, University of New Hampshire

Specialty Areas

Social and emotional development in childhood and adolescence; biological-psychological-social interactions in the developmental process; the development of psychological disorders in childhood and adolescence.

In the most general terms, I am interested in how individual characteristics and contexts transact over time to influence both normal and abnormal developmental. My work has been primarily in the areas of social and emotional development with the overarching theme of my research being exploration of how constitutional characteristics, like temperament and self-regulation, in conjunction with specific environments, are predictive of developmental outcomes. In past work, I have looked at how infant temperament, attachment, and heart rate variability predicted later emotional development. My more recent work has focused on older at-risk children, looking at how temperament (self-regulatory behavior), culture, SES, and family relationships can be used to predict feelings of self-competence and behavior problems. Currently, I am working on a large longitudinal study with preschoolers attending Head Start that expands on these themes and in addition, looks at ways in which economically disadvantaged minority and non-minority children differ from their non-disadvantaged counterparts in both cognitive and socioemotional development. In the future I plan to extend my work by incorporating data from large longitudinal databases.

Publications & Presentations

DiBiase, R., Kyte, D., Miller, P., & Wheeler, A. (in revision). Theory of Mind, Attachment, and Temperament: Predicting Feelings of Maternal and Peer Acceptance in Early Childhood.

DiBiase, R., Wheeler, A., & Burns, M., Predicting Behavior Problems Over Time: Context, Temperament, and Parental Conflict Tactics. Accepted to the biennial meeting of the International Society for Behavior Development June 2020, Rhodes, Greece.

Kyte, D., Jerram, M., & DiBiase, R. (2019). Brain Opioid Theory of Social Attachment: A Review of Evidence for Approach Motivation to Harm. Motivation Science. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/mot0000135

DiBiase, R., & Miller, P. M. (2012). Predicting Feelings of Cognitive Competence in Head Start Preschoolers. The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Human Development, 173(1), 23-40.

DiBiase, R., & Miller, P. M. (2015). Self-Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance in Preschoolers of Differing Economic and Cultural Backgrounds. The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Human Development. 176(3), 139-155.

Wheeler, A., DiBiase, R. & Miller, P. M. (2015, October). Controlling Parenting as a Moderator of Shy Temperament in the Development of Internalizing Problems in Preschoolers. Presented at the meeting for the Society for the Study of Human Development, Austin TX.