Rebecca is a clinical psychology doctoral student at Wayne State University under Dr. Chris Trentacosta.

Rebecca is a PhD student in clinical psychology working with Dr. Trentacosta. She collects data during home visits with families and brain scan visits when families come to the lab. She also manages the Tooth Fairy Project, which collects naturally shed baby teeth to study children’s prenatal and postnatal environmental exposures.

Her current research focuses on returning individual research results (RIRR) to mothers in the Brain Development Study, exploring ethical and accessible ways to share personalized lead-exposure findings from their children’s baby teeth. By providing clear, actionable information, her work aims to 1) increase environmental knowledge and health literacy in the sample, 2) strengthen researcher-participant relationships, and 3) learn directly from families what information collected across the study matters most to them. Her work also seeks to help families reduce children’s neurotoxic risks and support healthier developmental outcomes (see: www.mi.gov/getaheadoflead). Rebecca is interested in bridging research and community through transparency, reciprocity, and trust—ensuring participants are not just “subjects” of research but are recipients of the knowledge it generates. 

Looking ahead, she plans to code the mother-child conflict discussion task collected during the age 9 brain scan visit to analyze verbal and nonverbal behaviors, identify patterns of communication, emotional regulation, and conflict resolution, and examine recurring relational dynamics such as escalation, avoidance, and mutual support.

Key Research Interests:

  • Ethical Dimensions of Evidence Production
  • Research Ethics (autonomy, beneficence, justice)
  • Returning Individual Research Results (RIRR)
  • Environmental Health Communication
  • Community Engagement and Trust
  • Researcher–Participant Relationships
  • Parent–Child Relationships
  • Adult and Child Attachment
  • Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma and Emotion Regulation
  • Family Systems and Early Relational Patterns
  • Preventive Interventions
  • Neuroscience-Informed Interventions

Key Clinical Interests:

  • Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) for Couples
  • Individual Adult Psychotherapy
  • Child Neuropsychological Assessment (ADHD, Autism)
  • Parent Management Training (PMT)
  • Child Psychotherapy