About the talk
As major sources of socialization, parenting practices and parent-child relationships have potent impact on normative and atypical child development. Parenting behaviors as dynamic and multi-dimensional constructs also change over developmental periods under the reciprocal influences of child adjustment, demonstrating parent-driven and child-driven effects.
- In this talk I will introduce several conventional longitudinal studies conducted on a macro timescale spanning over multiple years, highlighting the influences of the level, change, and lability of parenting behaviors on child and adolescent developmental outcomes, as well as the interactive and synergetic roles of different parenting behaviors.
- Next I will introduce a series of recent studies on parent-adolescent dyads conducted on a micro timescale spanning over multiple days that closely investigate the day-to-day fluctuations of parenting behaviors and their links to adolescent adjustment.
- With innovative time series analysis such as Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling, longitudinal mediation, and dynamical systems modeling, I will illustrate a few pertinent issues in the parenting literature, encompassing congruency and discrepancy in parent- vs. adolescent-reported parenting behaviors, parent- vs. adolescent-driven processes in cross-day links, as well as the co-regulation of parent-adolescent dyads as coupled dynamical systems.
Biosketch
Dr. Zheng is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta in the Developmental Science area. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Human Development and Family Studies, as well as a M.A.S. in Applied Statistics, from the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the development and prevention of child and adolescent behavioral and emotional problems with the ultimate goal of informing intervention to promote physical and mental well-being.
Specifically, he investigates the influences of family and peer processes that shape normal and atypical development at multiple levels of analysis and timescales in various ecological contexts. A large body of Yao's research focuses on health disparity among disadvantaged and racialized populations, as well as understudied populations from the Majority World.
Dr. Zheng is the recipient of the 2021 Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science, the 2021 Early Career Award from the Society for the Study of Human Development, as well as the 2022 University of Alberta Martha Cook Piper Early Career Research Award. He has published a total of 52 peer-reviewed articles, with 20 1st author papers as well as 11 co-authored papers led by a trainee. He has won over one and half million Canadian dollars of external and internal grants as the principal investigator, encompassing two pillars of Canadian federal funding agencies (natural and social sciences), and several national and international grants as a co-investigator. Dr. Zheng currently serves on the International committee as well as the Publication committee of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and is an institute advisory board member of the Canadian Institute of Health Research (Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health).