Melanie Dirks

Research Areas:

Clinical Psychology | Developmental Science

Research Summary:

Prof. Dirks’ research focuses on (a) mapping the social and emotional skills children, adolescents, and young adults need to develop and maintain healthy relationships with peers and siblings; and (b) understanding how interpersonal functioning contributes to psychological symptoms. She uses different methodologies to answer her research questions, including observational approaches, daily diaries, questionnaires, and tasks examining emotion recognition and production. Ongoing projects focus on examining the associations between both emotional recognition and expressive accuracy and the maintenance of high-quality friendships during adolescence and young adulthood, understanding how adolescents’ everyday interactions with classmates, friends, and siblings are associated with their social and emotional and well-being, measuring victimization occurring in friendship, and understanding when and why adolescents and young adults might end a friendship.

Selected References:

*Morningstar, M., Gilbert, A., *Burdo, J., *Leis, M., & Dirks, M. A. (2021).  Recognition of vocal socio-emotional expressions at varying levels of emotional intensity. Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001024

*Santucci, K., *Khullar, T. H., & Dirks, M. A. (2021).  Implicit theories of friendship:  Are destiny and growth beliefs associated with young adults’ endorsement of dissolution and maintenance strategies in response to challenging situations with a same-gender friend? Social Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12560

*Kirmayer, M. H., *Khullar, T. H., & Dirks, M. A. (2021).  Initial development of a situation-based measure of emerging adults’ social competence in their same-gender friendships. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 31, 435-450. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12616

*Dryburgh, N. S. J., *Khullar, T., Sandre, A., Persram, R., Bukowski, W. M., & Dirks, M. A. (2020).  Evidence-base update of measures of social skills and social competence in clinical samples of youth. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 49, 573-594. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2020.1790381

Dirks, M. A., Recchia, H.E, …, Wakschlag, L. S. (2019). Differentiating typical from atypical perpetration of aggression towards a sibling among preschoolers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 60, 267-276. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12939

Dirks, M. A., *Cuttini, L., *Mott, A. J., & Henry, D. B.  (2017). Associations between early adolescents’ victimization and self-reported responses to peer provocation are moderated by peer-reported aggression. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 27, 436-451.