Anita Adams | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Anita Adams

Clinical Psychology Graduate Student

Research Interests:

Transdiagnostic mechanisms to improve psychopathological outcomes in minoritized populations
Emotion-based personality trait and disorder development across the lifespan
Adverse early life experiences
Emotion and emotion regulation
Aging
Health psychology

Research:

During my undergraduate research career, my research was involved in developmental psychology; specifically, I studied the impact of culture and parental emotion socialization on children's emotion understanding and development. I also studied emotion regulation, personality, and sleep behaviors in undergraduate student populations. During my post-baccalaureate experience, my research shifted to a more clinical focus, and I worked with older and middle adult and child populations with diagnoses such as dementia, hormonally-impacted depression (specifically, perimenopausal depression), and autism.

My current research is centered on how trait responses to emotion (e.g., how one's consistent style of coping develops into a personality trait) can impact or be impacted by adverse childhood experiences. More specifically, I am interested in how one's early life experiences can impact one's later emotional and health development into adulthood. I am also interested in how trait responses to emotion may serve as transdiagnostic mechanisms for psychopathology and how to best identify them to improve psychopathological risk for minoritized populations.

I am a fifth year student in Dr. Suzanne Segerstrom's lab and avidly enjoying mentoring undergraduate students who are interested in psychology, research, and the graduate school process. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me with questions about the lab and/or my research!

Contact Information

aad257@uky.edu

111B Kastle Hall

(919) 696-0255

Affiliations

Psychology

Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Selected Publications

Selected Publications:

Publications:

Tipsword, J. M., Southward, M. W., Adams, A. M., Brake, A., & Badour, C. L. (in press). Daily associations between experiences of trauma-related mental contamination and use of specific coping strategies: Results of a daily monitoring study. Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

Chentsova-Dutton Y., Leontyeva A., Halberstadt, A. G., & Adams, A. M. (2021). And they all lived unhappily ever after: Positive and negative emotions in American and Russian picture books. Emotion, 8, 1585-1598. doi: 10.1037/emo0001021.

Clasey, J. L., Adams, A. M., Geiger, P. J., Segerstrom, S. C., & Crofford, L. J. (2020). Estimation of cardiorespiratory fitness without exercise testing: Cross-validation in midlife and older women. Women's Health Reports, 1, 584-591.

Selected Presentations:

Adams, A. M., Meyr, K., & Segerstrom, S. C. (2023, February). Early life experiences and coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. Data blitz accepted for presentation at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Atlanta, GA.

Tipsword, J. M., Southward, M. W., Adams, A. M., Brake, C. A., & Badour, C. L. (2022, November). Daily associations between trauma-related mental contamination and use of specific coping strategies among women with a history of sexual trauma. Poster accepted for presentation at the 38th annual meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Atlanta, GA.

Adams, A. M., & Segerstrom, S. C. (2022, March). COVID-19 protective behaviors and conscientiousness in older adults. Poster presented at the American Psychosomatic Society, Long Beach, CA.

Adams, A., Smith, G. T., Widiger, T. A., & Segerstrom, S. C. (2021, February). Multidimensional structure and demographic correlates of trait responses to emotion. Poster presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology virtual conference.

Leontyeva, A., Chentsova-Dutton, Y., Halberstadt, A., & Adams, A. (2019, March). Are emotions costly in a harsh world? Poster presented at preconference session at the Society for Affective Science, Boston, MA.

Adams, A. M., Halberstadt, A. G., & Chentsova, Y. (2015, November). Dzek and Jill learn what to feel: Emotions in picture books across Russian and American culture. Poster presented at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, Seattle, WA.

Bohanek, J. G., Adams, A. M., Leon, E. D., & Halberstadt, A. G. (2015, March). Mother-child reminiscing and children’s emotion understanding. Poster presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Conference, Philadelphia, PA.

Adams, A. M., Brochu, H., Griffin, J., Leon, E. D., & Lozada, F. (2014, April). Mothers’ coping strategy goals for their 3rd grade children: A mixed methods approach. Poster presented at the Southwest Psychological Association Conference, San Antonio, TX.

Rogers, M. L., MacCormack, J. K., Castro, V. L., Adams, A. M., & Halberstadt, A. G. (2014, April). Mother’s maladaptive emotion regulation strategies mediate between maternal emotion beliefs & children’s socioemotional skills. Poster presented at the Society for Affective Science Conference, Bethesda, MD.