FSU School of Teacher Education Colloquium featuring Dr. Heidi Gazelle

This presentation highlights our research on vulnerability - stress processes in the development of anxious solitude (social withdrawal) and mental health from middle childhood through early adolescence. Peer exclusion, a salient interpersonal stressor in school environments, predicts divergent pathways of anxious solitude and mental health for children and adolescents over time. However, school transitions present the opportunity for a “fresh start” and predict a dramatic drop in peer exclusion. Some anxious solitary children take advantage of the middle school transition and demonstrate improved peer relations in middle school relative to elementary school, whereas others continue to experience difficulties with peer relations and mental health.
Dr. Heidi Gazelle is Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science and the Director of the Social Development Lab at Florida State University. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Wesleyan University, her PhD in Developmental and Socialization Processes from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and conducted her postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Developmental Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. Her longitudinal research focuses on the interplay between multilevel individual and environmental factors in the development of social withdrawal; interpersonal relations with peers, parents, and teachers; mental health; and psychosocial adjustment from childhood through young adulthood. Specifically, her work emphasizes vulnerability-stress processes in development, and developmental transition periods (such as school transitions) as potential turning points in development. Her approach to developmental science is characterized by longitudinal investigation, multiple methods, multiple informants, and multi-level phenomena. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and is currently funded the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.