Jessica Dollar

  • Research Scientist
  • Human Development and Family Studies, UNCG

I am interested in how emotional and self-regulatory development are related to psychological, social, and physical well-being from childhood through emerging adulthood. I am an Investigator on collaborative research projects that follow children and their families across childhood, adolescence, and into early adulthood to better understand development. Education: B.A. Psychology (2003), The University of North Carolina at Greensboro; M.S. Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS; 2008), The Pennsylvania State University; Ph.D. Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS; 2011), The Pennsylvania State University.

There are 19 included publications by Jessica Dollar :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Approach and temperamental positive emotionality in toddlerhood predict early childhood behavior problems 2014 265 The aim of the study was to examine the moderating role of positive affect on the relation between approach behaviors and adjustment outcomes. One hundred eleven toddlers participated in a laboratory assessment of approach and positive affect at 24 m...
Associations between eating behaviors, diet quality and body mass index among adolescents 2020 205 Objective: Some eating behaviors are associated with negative nutrition-related outcomes in adults, but research is lacking in adolescent samples. The current study examined whether dietary restraint moderates the relationship between disinhibition a...
A biopsychosocial perspective on maternal psychopathology and the development of child emotion regulation 2014 503 In this commentary, the authors note that Gratz and colleagues (2014) have made an important step in understanding the effect of maternal borderline personality (BP) pathology on children's developing emotion regulation. The emphasis on mechanisms of...
Childhood self-regulation as a mechanism through which early overcontrolling parenting is associated with adjustment in preadolescence 2018 597 We examined longitudinal associations across an 8-year time span between overcontrolling parenting during toddlerhood, self-regulation during early childhood, and social, emotional, and academic adjustment in preadolescence (N = 422). Overcontrolling...
Childhood social preference predicts lowered risk of insulin resistance in adolescence 2020 162 Insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, and Type II diabetes are increasingly common among young people in the United States. The quality of social relationships is a predictor of cardiometabolic health among adults, but has not been studied as a predi...
Developmental cascade and transactional associations among infant biological and behavioral indicators of temperament and maternal behavior 2017 256 An empirical model of temperament that assessed transactional and cascade associations between respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), negative affectivity, and the caregiving environment (i.e., maternal intrusiveness) across three time points during inf...
Developmental patterns of respiratory sinus arrhythmia from toddlerhood to adolescence 2020 1243 Parasympathetic nervous system functioning as indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is widely used as a measure of physiological regulation. We examined developmental patterns of children’s resting RSA and RSA reactivity from 2 to 15 years of...
Dietary Restraint in Adolescence Predicts Diet Quality in Young Adulthood 2020 758 Establishing a diet that follows the Dietary Guidelines for Americans has been associated with lower risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Some research has shown that individuals’ desire for weight control is an important factor ...
Exuberant and inhibited children: Person-centered profiles and links to social adjustment 2017 857 The current study aimed to substantiate and extend our understanding regarding the existence and developmental pathways of 3 distinct temperament profiles—exuberant, inhibited, and average approach—in a sample of 3.5-year-old children (n = 121). The ...
Family-level factors affecting social and academic competence of African American children: An examination of promotive and protective factors 2019 251 Background: Research shows children’s life trajectories and outcomes are strongly influenced by factors affecting development of social and academic competence that also interact with racial disparities in academic settings. Given the importance of s...
Longitudinal associations between emotion regulation and adiposity in late adolescence: Indirect effects through eating behaviors 2019 1044 The prevalence of obesity among U.S. youth continues to increase, with many adolescents engaging in unhealthy eating behaviors. Increasingly, research points to the role of self-regulation in obesity development, yet existing work has largely focused...
Maternal socialization of child emotion and adolescent adjustment: Indirect effects through emotion regulation 2020 1595 A fundamental question in developmental science is how parental emotion socialization processes are associated with children’s subsequent adaptation. Few extant studies have examined this question across multiple developmental periods and levels of a...
Rationale, design and methods for the RIGHT Track Health Study; pathways from childhood self- regulation to cardiovascular risk in adolescence 2016 841 Background: Cardiovascular risk factors during adolescence—including obesity, elevated lipids, altered glucose metabolism, hypertension, and elevated low-grade inflammation—is cause for serious concern and potentially impacts subsequent morbidity and...
The role of positive emotions in child development: A developmental treatment of the broaden and build theory 2019 2264 Historically, research on emotions in childhood has been dominated by studies on negative emotions. Consequently, little research has been conducted on the role of positive emotions. Recently, an alternative model of emotion proposed that positive em...
Self-regulation as a predictor of patterns of change in externalizing behaviors from infancy to adolescence 2017 223 We examined associations between specific self-regulatory mechanisms and externalizing behavior patterns from ages 2 to 15 (N = 443). The relation between multiple self-regulatory indicators across multiple domains (i.e., physiological, attentional, ...
Temperament and emotion regulation: The role of autonomic nervous system reactivity 2010 336 The aim of the present study was to examine the moderating role of parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system functioning on the relationship between child temperament and emotion regulation. Sixty-two 4.5-year olds (31 females) were rated by the...
Temperamental anger and positive reactivity and the development of social skills: Implications for academic competence during preadolescence 2017 719 Research Findings: This study examines whether the development of social skills during childhood serves as a mechanism through which temperamental anger and positive reactivity in toddlerhood influence children’s academic competence during preadolesc...
Temperamental surgency and emotion regulation as predictors of childhood social competence 2012 1167 The primary aims of the current study were to longitudinally examine the direct relationship between children’s temperamental surgency and social behaviors as well as the moderating role of children’s emotion regulation. A total of 90 4.5-year-old ch...
Temperamental vulnerability to emotion dysregulation and risk for mental and physical health challenges 2019 1432 Emotion dysregulation characterizes many forms of psychopathology. Patterns of dysregulation occur as a function of a developmental process in which normative and adaptive emotion regulation skills fail to become part of the child's behavioral repert...