
Erika Lunkenheimer, Ph.D.
title
Associate Professor of Psychology
Associate Director: Child Maltreatment Solutions Network
Phone
814-863-1991Office
448 Moore Building
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
Brief Bio
Dr. Lunkenheimer is an Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology and an Associate Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network. Her research program revolves around risk and protective processes in the parent-child relationship, with the dual goals of (1) understanding how mother-child and father-child interactions and regulatory processes contribute to developmental psychopathology and (2) uncovering malleable relationship processes that aid in the tailoring and improvement of preventive intervention programs for families at risk, particularly risk for child maltreatment. This work is grounded in dynamic systems theory and dyadic and time series analytic methods, and has provided an understanding of parent-child biobehavioral coregulation in early childhood and its association with family risk.
Education
2006 Ph.D., Developmental Psychology, University of Michigan
1999 M.S., Marriage and Family Therapy, Northwestern University
1996 B.A., Psychology, Northwestern University
Expertise
parenting, parent-child interaction, self-regulation, child behavior problems, observational methods, dynamic systems theory and methods, developmental psychopathology
Research Interests
parent-child coregulation, parent and child self-regulation, parent mental health, stress physiology, autonomy support, harsh parenting, child maltreatment risk, maltreatment severity