Advancing knowledge of mothers’ emotional reactivity
This PhD scholarship is open to domestic students passionate about understanding mother-child interactions.
This scholarship is suitable for candidates with strong interests in psychology, cognitive science and/or mental health.
Key details
- 20257401
- PhD
- Applications close on 30 April 2025
- Domestic
- Psychological sciences
- $38,500 p.a.
Full project title: Advancing understanding of mothers’ psycho-physiological arousal when interacting with infants
About the scholarship
When babies are upset, their parents often help to meet their needs and co-regulate them. But what do we know about mothers’ experiences during these interactions?
This project will use cutting-edge psycho-physiological arousal measures – including heart rate, breathing rate and sweating – to understand mothers’ emotional reactivity in interactions with their babies.
A key focus of this PhD will be developing a map of what typical maternal emotional reactivity looks like as children age from infancy to early childhood. This will involve collecting longitudinal data from mothers and infants in laboratory-based tasks.
To date, maternal emotional reactivity has been examined cross-sectionally often with variable-centred analyses. This PhD research provides the opportunity to supplement variable-centred analyses with person-centred analyses to further illuminate whether there are specific groups of mothers with emotional reactivity trajectories that may be associated with greater risk of poor child developmental outcomes.
This scholarship is suitable for candidates with strong interests in any of the following areas:
- psychology (eg developmental psychology)
- cognitive science
- psychological science
- parenting
- developmental psychobiology
- mental health.
Prior experience with psycho-physiological measures is not required, as training and support will be provided.
Availability
This scholarship is available to eligible candidates to undertake a direct entry three-year PhD program.
Contact Dr Frances Doyle at frances.doyle@mq.edu.au to discuss your interest and application.
Awards will only be available to applicants who have a valid Working with Children Check (volunteer or employee).
Components
The scholarship comprises:
- a tuition fee offset/scholarship
- a living allowance stipend.
The value of each stipend scholarship is $38,500 per annum (full time, indexed) for three years.