Dr. Christine Lackner

Christine Lackner is an Associate Professor (Psychology) at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her research combines methods of Developmental Psychology and Neuroscience to study individual differences in self-regulation and executive functioning during early childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. These are periods of major development to these skills and times when extensive individual differences can be observed. Her research uses event-related potentials (ERPs, brain waves) to reflect attentional and inhibitory control processes in normative developmental and some clinical populations. She focuses on how these neural measures can help explain some of the wide variations in young children, adolescents, and young adults. This is not to say that environmental and experiential factors (e.g., family, peers, etc.) do not play a role in these individual differences; in fact, they play a large role! However, these environmental factors can simultaneously influence both the neural factors and behavioural outcomes. One current aim of her research focuses on the relationships between early childhood stressors, including stressors that may be specific to living with a developmental disability (e.g., painful medical procedures, social exclusion), brain functioning, and behavioural or attentional control.