Human Development and Family Studies Our Labs
As a land-grant university, Colorado State University has a core mission for public engagement and service that contributes to the economic and societal progress of our state and nation.
The integration of education and research creating knowledge for the public good is an overarching goal for the Department of Human Development and Family Studies.
Adolescent Wellness Lab
The AWL Lab conducts a number of different research studies to learn more about programs that lower stress and depression, increase healthy behaviors, decrease teens’ likelihood of developing physical and mental health problems, and prevention of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Adult Development and Aging Project
The research activities of the ADAPT lab focus on understanding and promoting healthy development in early, middle, and late adulthood. Specific emphasis is given to cognitive, emotional, and social factors of adult development and aging.
The BRAiN Laboratory
The BRAiN Laboratory studies the mechanisms of decline, maintenance, and plasticity of the adult and aging brain. The lab is interested in how brain health translated to cognitive performance in aging.
Couple and Family Enhancement Lab
Dr. Kelley Quirk. Kelley and her research team are interested in exploring healthy romantic relationships from two angles: first, from a prevention angle, where we examine early danger signs of unhealthy relationships, as well as biomarkers of relational distress. From an intervention angle, we examine processes of change in couple and family therapy, seeking to identify factors critical to positive relational outcomes in psychotherapy.
Campus Connections
Campus Connections is grounded in evidence-based practices for youth mentoring while also conducting rigorous research to maximize the intervention effects. Through this research program, Campus Connections is developing, testing, and disseminating unique contributions to youth mentoring nationally
Developmental Disabilities Research Laboratory
The Developmental Disabilities Research Laboratory at Colorado State University aims to improve our understanding of development in Down syndrome and other disabilities.
Emotional Attachment and Emotional Availability Lab
The Emotional Attachment and Emotional Availablity Lab has been involved with the development of the Emotional Availability (EA) System (Biringen, 2008; Biringen, Robinson, & Emde, 1998) to evaluate the quality of parent-child relationships.
Emotional Development Laboratory
The Emotional Developmental Laboratory is particularly interested in how both personal and interpersonal processes contribute to regulation and dysregulation of emotions and motivation and how to intervene to promote positive and effective regulation.
Family Relationships and Development Laboratory
The Family and Development lab is dedicated to understanding how experiencing marital conflict and poor-quality relationships with parents puts adolescents at risk for problems regulating responses to stress, biases in attention, symptoms of depression and anxiety, and problem behaviors.
Health, Emotion, and Aging Research Team
The Health, Emotion, and Aging Research Team (HEART) examines how individuals develop the abilities to regulate emotional experiences and cope with daily stressors and how these skills can be harness to promote healthy and successful aging.
Healthy Cognitive Aging Lab
The mission of the Healthy Cognitive Aging Lab is to identify and evaluate factors that promote healthy age-related cognitive changes, serve as early indicators of cognitive decline, and reduce the risk of developing dementia.
Mindfulness and Family Resilience Laboratory
The Mindfulness and Family Resilience Lab conducts studies focusing on how mindfulness affects interactions between parents and their children and how to use what is learned to inform and create future prevention and intervention efforts for families.
Promoting Healthy Aging and Families Research Laboratory
Our mission is to support individuals as they experience aging-related family issues. We do this through the development and testing of new interventions and support mechanisms designed for family caregivers and care recipients and for grand-families.