Vrinda Kalia

Miami University | MU · Department of Psychology

The role of dual language exposure in children's cognitive development continues to be debated. The majority of the research with bilingual children in the US has been conducted with children becoming literate in only one of their languages. Dual language learners who are becoming literate in both their languages are acutely understudied. We compar...

Recent research has demonstrated that heightened motivational levels promote enhanced attention capabilities. However, the relation between attentional systems and the trait-based ability to sustain a motivational state long-term is less understood. Grit refers to one’s ability and willingness to pursue long-term goals despite setbacks. This report...

Studies that have examined the role of cognitive control in the acquisition of second language vocabulary in dual language learners are rare. First and second language vocabulary, phonological awareness and cognitive control were assessed in Spanish-English dual language learners (kindergarten-4th grade; half native-English and half native-Spanish)...

Exposure to early life adversity is associated with chronic stress and a range of stress-related health problems in adulthood. Since chronic stress debilitates activity in the prefrontal cortex (pFC), maladaptive regulatory strategies in response to stress have been proposed as one explanation for the impact of early life adversity on health outcom...

Immigrants around the world learn to navigate different cultural spheres in a multifaceted process that impacts their identity. Those who are able to reconstruct their identity by harmoniously integrating varying cultural frames of reference are also able to experience productive family relationships and positive well-being. In the current study, w...

According to socioemotional selectivity theory, motivation influences emotion regulation. Grit is a motivation orientation defined by the passionate pursuit of long-term goals. We conducted two studies to determine the relation between facets of grit and two emotion regulation strategies: cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. In Study 1...

Executive functions are cognitive processes that facilitate goal-directed behavior by enabling us to direct and control our thoughts. Cognitive flexibility is an executive function characterized by the ability to mentally shift between rules, strategies, or tasks. Several studies have reported that acute (brief) stress impairs cognitive flexibility...

The prefrontal cortex is sensitive to stress experiences and significantly impacted by early life adversity. Cognitive flexibility is an executive function that is associated with positive outcomes in adulthood and implicated in activity in the prefrontal cortex. The relationship between early life adversity and cognitive flexibility is underreport...

While preschoolers consistently produce and use labels for happy and sad emotional states, labels for other emotional states (e.g., disgust) emerge much later in development. One explanation for these differences may lie in how parents first talk about these emotions with their children in infancy and toddlerhood. The current study examined parent...

College can be a stressful time for students as they transition to greater independence and increased responsibilities from before. Increased stress levels can have a debilitating effect on their ability to persist with their academic goals. In the psychological literature, researchers believe they have identified a motivation trait that may explai...

Abstract Objective Characterized by setting high standards for performance, perfectionism is a transdiagnostic process implicated in the development and maintenance of psychopathology. In contrast, cognitive flexibility is associated with enhanced mental health. Yet, the relationship between perfectionism and cognitive flexibility is understudied....

Converging empirical evidence indicates that exposure to adversity in childhood is associated with increased vulnerability to mental health problems in adulthood. As early life adversity has the potential to alter an individual's appraisal of threat, we hypothesized that individuals exposed to adversity in childhood may also exhibit increased threa...

Abstract Objective Although disordered eating is robustly associated with suicidal thoughts, it is not well understood why these conditions relate to each other. Emotion dysregulation is a shared risk factor for disordered eating and suicidal thoughts. Individuals with dysregulated emotions struggle to select appropriate strategies to modulate emo...

Problem solving is a higher order cognitive capacity with implications for everyday functioning. Although Grit predicts academic outcomes, the relation between facets of Grit, Consistency and Perseverance, and problem solving remain unknown. We report the results of two studies conducted to examine the impact of facets of grit on problem solving wi...

The Association between Vocabulary Performance and Emergent Literacy in a sample of African American Preschool Children.

Introduction: Grit is a personality trait that affords individuals the ability to push through challenging circumstances, suggesting tolerance of negative affect. In contrast, individuals with disordered eating are motivated to avoid negative affect. We speculated whether grit would buffer against disordered eating attitudes and behaviors, and cond...

Cognitive processes that afford us the ability to control thoughts and achieve goal-directed behavior are known as executive functions. Empirical evidence in the past few years has demonstrated that executive functions can be influenced by acute stress. The impact of acute stress on cognitive flexibility, a key aspect of executive functions, has re...

OxyHb levels in the cortical areas for males. Functional changes represented by red curves vs. OxyHb levels in the scalp/skull areas (or systemic changes) identified by blue curves. Values represented are averaged across participants in the Stress group (left column) and Control group (right column). The X-axis presents the duration of measurement...

OxyHb levels in the cortical areas for females. Functional changes represented by red curves vs. OxyHb levels in the scalp/skull areas (or systemic changes) identified by blue curves. Values represented are averaged across participants in the Stress group (left column) and Control group (right column). The X-axis presents the duration of measuremen...

Hemodynamic changes were measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy from subjects undergoing cold-pressor (sham) tasks. Systemic and functional components of these signals were calculated by minimizing the average mutual information or by using NIRFAST-based 3D reconstruction.

Previous research has shown that early and late bilinguals differ in their language learning experiences and linguistic outcomes. However, evidence of differences between these bilinguals on measures of executive function (EF) has been mixed. As a result, the current study sought to (1) determine whether early and late bilinguals vary from one anot...

The relationship between language development and executive function (EF) in children is not well understood. The Lexical Stroop Sort (LSS) task is a computerized EF task created for the purpose of examining the relationship between school-aged children's oral language development and EF. To validate this new measure, a diverse sample of school-age...

Narrative has been theorised as significantly implicated in the articulation of social identities and in the reproduction of culture. The present study investigated the kinds of observable practices used to achieve those ends. Spontaneous interactions between mothers and adolescent daughters from the Indian immigrant community of New Zealand were r...

More than 90 million Indian children are becoming literate in English, yet the home literacy environment for Indian children learning English has not been explored. Preschool children (N = 50) from Bangalore, India, were assessed for vocabulary, phonological awareness, and print skills in English, their language of schooling. Parents reported on th...

Examines the home literacy enviornments of middle and low-income children from India.

The goal of this study was to examine the role of Indian bilingual parents’ book reading practices on the development of the children’s oral language, narrative and literacy skills in English, their second language. About 24 bilingual children from two preschools in Bangalore, India were tested in schools in English on receptive vocabulary, complex...

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which feminist theory can contribute to the construction of an alternative and more inclusive account of the process of identity development than the one proposed by dialogical accounts. Focusing on Anzaldua’s (1987) concept of mestiza and on Lugones’ (1994) concept of curdling, the paper proposes...