Alexandra
“Lexie” Tabachnick wasn’t looking for a path to research when she was
scouting around for a doctoral program in psychology. She wanted to be a
clinician doing practical, hands-on stuff.
But friends suggested
she check out the work underway at the University of Delaware —
especially that of Mary Dozier, Amy Elizabeth du Pont Chair of
Developmental Psychology. She took their advice.
“It wasn’t until I
was interviewing with Mary that I saw the value of the clinical science
approach,” she said. “It was eye-opening.”
That approach applies
the power of data and scientific research to the intractable problems
people face, problems that can consume lives and futures.
Now she collects and analyzes psychophysiological data to study the impact Dozier’s Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC) program is having on vulnerable children.
Tabachnick,
in her fifth year of doctoral studies, is also helping to mentor other
grad students and some of the more than 40 undergraduates who are part
of Dozier’s lab.
The ABC intervention aims to strengthen bonds
between parents and vulnerable children, some of whom have been adopted
internationally, born to mothers dependent on substances like opioids,
mistreated and/or neglected.
Dozier’s research has drawn expansive
support and recognition, including a lifetime achievement award in 2019
from the American Psychological Association, and now includes
adolescent children who started the program as infants. Tabachnick and
others are analyzing biomarkers in these children, seeing if and how the
program’s effects continue as the children grow older.
Read more about Tabachnick's work, and that of other graduate students, in the Front Edge of Discovery section in the new issue of the online "UD Research" magazine.
Article by Beth Miller; photo by Evan Krape
Published Dec. 1, 2020
