Child Development Research
Dr. El-Sheikh has been teaching and conducting research at Auburn University since 1990. She is currently an Alumni Professor with the College of Human Sciences in the Human Development and Family Studies Department. She has been doing research for 10 years. She is currently the primary investor of two one-going research projects.
There are good reasons to do research on child development. It is estimated that more than forty percent of children in the United States live in homes with high levels of martial conflict. Children suffer in different ways, and there are a lot of unanswered questions. Research is conducted to develop strategies to protect children. Children suffer when parents fight.
One of her projects, funded by the National Institutes of Health, investigates marital conflict and violence and their relationship with children’s development. “If conditions and mediating variables that foster child dysfunction were better understood, prevention and remediation could be efficiently targeted at children and families at risk,” from El-Sheikh’s website http://www.humsci.auburn.edu/~elshemm/.
The second project, funded by the Alabama Extension Services and the National Science foundation, studies the role stress plays on children’s immune system and sleep patterns. “We propose that marital conflict induces physiological arousal, and that for some children, particularly for highly reactive children, this arousal is sufficiently intense and long lasting to disrupt sleep and interfere with emotional, behavioral, and cognitive development. Less automatically reactive children, and children who can recover, or calm their arousal, quickly, may be more immune to the negative effects of parental conflict,” from the section, current research projects, on her website.
For the second project, children and parents participating in the study complete questionnaires and kept diaries. An Antigraph is used to provide objectivity. An Antigraph is a wristwatch-sized movement monitor worn during sleep. Sleep problems lead to behavioral problems such as aggression. They also lead to emotional problems such as depression and anxiety.
El-Sheiki’s research has been recognized for connecting several disciplines concerned with child health. Her work combines sleep patterns, development psychopathology and physiological regulation. “There have been few investigations of interactions between social and psycho-physiological factors in the prediction of child outcomes, and such studies are needed to shed light on the complex nature of the interplay among variables leading to various child developmental trajectories,” El-Sheikh says on her website.
Visit the Auburn Opelika Parent website, http://www.auburnopelikaparent.com/, to read an article on El-Sheikh. If you are an undergraduate student and would like to get hands-on experience, join the research team. You can learn to code data, interview children and use data entry programs. You can also get class credit! If you are interested please contact the Lab Coordinator (Lori Staton) at 334.844.6905.
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