Emma G Casey

Graduate Research Assistant

transdiagnostic role of interoception (autism, emotion development & eating development; self-regulation); early childhood education; emotion-focused teaching; feeding practices;

Emma G. Casey is a registered dietitian and doctoral candidate in applied developmental psychology at George Mason University.

My research interests fall into three main areas:
1.Interoceptive awareness (the ability to feel internal bodily sensations) in early childhood and throughout the lifespan; including its measurement, multi-dimensional nature, and how it may underly the co-development of eating, emotion, and autistic symptoms & traits
2. Nutrition & child development; how food insecurity, feeding styles, and macro/micronutrient deficiencies relate to child development; in home and school settings
3. Emotion socialization & social-emotional learning in early childhood education; I support the development and implementation of an observational-based measure, the EMOTERS, that captures the degree to which early childhood educators use emotion-focused teaching practices

Cross cutting themes include: quantitative statistics (longitudinal, structural equation modeling, psychometrics), measure development using mixed-methods (i.e., qualitative and quantitative methods)

At George Mason, Emma is a graduate lecturer and a research assistant in Dr. Tim Curby’s Development in School Context lab.

Prior to graduate school, Emma worked in food policy and science communications for five years in Washington D.C.

Current Research

Emma works in the DISC lab with Dr. Tim Curby to measure emotion-focused teaching in early childhood education settings. She serves the Alternative Licensure Program, which provides early childhood education teachers who are serving the Chicago community with a path to achieving licensure.

Emma is also pursuing an independent line of research on interoception.

Courses Taught

Child Development
Principles of Learning Lab
Research Methods in Psychology Lab
Introduction to Statistics Lab

Education

M.A., Psychology - George Mason University

B.S., Nutrition Science - Penn State