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Leigha MacNeill headshot photo

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Phone: 765-494-3312

Office:

Hanley Hall, Room 247
1202 Mitch Daniels Blvd.
West Lafayette, IN 47907

Curriculum Vitae Back to Directory

Leigha MacNeill

Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Science

Areas of Expertise

  • Social-emotional development, family systems, temperament and self-regulation, developmental psychophysiology, early childhood mental health, dyadic data analysis, risk prediction modeling

HHS Signature Research Area(s)

  • Developmental Health and Wellness

Department of Human Development and Family Science Research Area(s)

  • Culture and Diversity
  • Health and Well-Being
  • Interpersonal Relations

Biography

As a developmental psychologist, I integrate family systems and biological perspectives to investigate young children’s self-regulation and social-emotional development across multiple levels of analysis. Specifically, I study how factors extrinsic (e.g., family, adversity) and intrinsic (e.g., temperament, biology) to the child contribute to their development of self-regulation over time, as well as how these regulatory trajectories can place children at risk for mental health problems. The methods I use to study these processes include autonomic physiology, EEG, eye-tracking, daily diaries, and observations of family interactions. My research is also rooted in a translational approach geared toward rapid application, in an effort to generate questions and tools that advance early identification of mental health problems, clinical decision-making, and mental health equity. I am especially interested in adopting a strengths-based perspective for understanding children and their families, striving to elucidate resilience-promoting pathways toward healthy functioning for all children.

 

Four key questions guide my work:

  1. How does the family system shape young children’s self-regulation and mental health?
  2. How can we leverage novel methods to better capture the complexities of child development?
  3. How can we optimize risk prediction for detection and prevention of early mental health problems for public health impact (e.g., pediatric primary care, school settings)?
  4. How can we develop measures to assess protective contextual processes in ways that are personalized, inclusive, and culturally meaningful?

 

At Purdue, I direct the Social-emotional Health In Nurturing Environments (SHINE) Lab to study these questions.

 

Accepting graduate students for the December 1, 2024 deadline.

Education

  • Ph.D., 2019, Pennsylvania State University
  • M.S., 2016, Pennsylvania State University
  • B.A., 2012, University of Rochester

Current Courses

  • HDFS 305 - Biosocial Foundations of the Family

Selected Publications

  • Wakschlag, L. S., MacNeill, L. A., Pool, L. R., Smith, J. D., Adam, H., Barch, D. M., Norton, E. S., Rogers, C. E., Smyser, C. D., Luby, J. L., Allen, N. B. (2024). Predictive utility of irritability "in context": Proof-of-principle for an early childhood mental health risk calculator. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 53, 231-245. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2023.2188553
  • +Zhang, Y., +MacNeill, L. A., Edwards, R. C., Nili, A., Zola, A., Burns, J. Giase, G., Norton, E. S., Wiggins, J., & Wakschlag, L. S. (2024). Developmental trajectories of irritability across the transition to toddlerhood: Associations with effortful control and psychopathology. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 52, 125-139. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-023-01098-1
  • MacNeill, L. A. , Krogh-Jespersen, S. , Zhang, Y., Giase, G., Edwards, R., Petitclerc, A., Mithal, L., Mestan, K., Grobman, W., Norton, E., Alshurafa, N., Moskowitz, J., Tandon, D., & Wakschlag, L. S. (2023). Lability of prenatal stress during the COVID-19 pandemic links to negative affect in infancy. Infancy, 28, 136-157. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12499
  • MacNeill, L. A., Fu, X., Buss, K., & Pérez-Edgar, K. (2022). Do you see what I mean?: Using mobile eye tracking to capture parent–child dynamics in the context of anxiety risk. Development and Psychopathology, 34, 997-1012. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579420001601
  • MacNeill, L. A., Allen, N. B., Poleon, R. B., Vargas, T., Osborne, K. J., Damme, K. S. F., Barch, D. M., Krogh-Jespersen, S., Nielsen, A. N., Norton, E. S., Smyser, C. D., Rogers, C. E., Luby, J. L., Mittal, V. A., & Wakschlag, L. S. (2021). Translating RDoC to real world impact in developmental psychopathology: A neurodevelopmental framework for application of mental health risk calculators. Development and Psychopathology, 33, 1665-1684. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579421000651
  • MacNeill, L. A., Shewark, E. A., Pérez-Edgar, K., & Blandon, A. Y. (2021). Sharing behavior in the family system: Contributions of parental emotional expressiveness and children’s physiological regulation. Parenting: Science and Practice, 21, 332-356. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295192.2020.1843358
  • Pérez-Edgar, K., MacNeill, L. A., & Fu, X. (2020). Navigating through the experienced environment: Insights from mobile eye-tracking. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29, 286-292. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420915880 https://osf.io/qawc4/

Selected Grants

  • Optimizing prediction of preschool psychopathology from brain:behavior markers of emotion dysregulation from birth: A computational, developmental cognitive neuroscience approach. National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH121877). Period: 2020-2025. Total: $7,451,982. Role: Co-Investigator.
  • Identifying biobehavioral risk and resilience mechanisms for the development of an early childhood mental health risk calculator. National Institute of Mental Health (L40MH121108). NIH Loan Repayment Program Award. Period: 2022-2024. Total: $100,000. Role: Principal Investigator.

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