Tara Chaplin, Ph.D.

Dr. Tara Chaplin is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of Clinical Training for the Clinical Psychology Program at George Mason University. She received her Ph.D. in Child-Clinical psychology Penn State University in 2003. Dr. Chaplin’s research interests focus on developing family-focused interventions to improve emotional functioning and prevent risk behaviors and psychopathology in adolescents. She also studies the role of emotional arousal, emotion regulation, and sex differences in the development of risk behaviors (such as substance use) and of psychopathology (such as depression, anxiety, and conduct problems) during adolescence. She is interested in the role of the family context and parenting in shaping adolescents’ emotional development and their development of psychopathology. Dr. Chaplin’s research incorporates multiple bio-behavioral methods, including self-reports of emotional experience, observational measures, cardiovascular measures such as heart rate variability, neuroendocrine measures such as HPA Axis, and fMRI. Dr. Chaplin has been awarded millions in federal funding from the National Institutes of Health and other organizations. She is currently conducting an NIH funded randomized controlled trial to test the effects of a mindfulness intervention for highly stressed parents to reduce stress, improve parenting, and prevent adolescent risk behaviors and psychopathology symptoms. A second NIH study is also underway that examines parent-adolescent interactions, adolescent emotion-related physiology and brain function, and the development of substance use and psychopathology symptoms from early to middle adolescence. Dr. Chaplin has over 60 peer reviewed publications as well as multiple book chapters, and has given more than 90 conference presentations and multiple invited talks. She is on the editorial board for Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology and is a consulting editor to Emotion.