People: Graduate Students

Raquel Gabbitas

Raquel Antoinette Gabbitas is a third-year graduate student at the Institute of Child Development. Raquel received her BS in Psychology in 2008 from Westminster College in Salt Lake City, UT. Raquel is a Diversity of Views and Experiences (DOVE) fellow and participated in the Community of Scholars Program at the University of Minnesota before starting her first year of graduate school. Raquel's research interests include executive functioning, cognitive processes in relation to emotional states, hormonal components of stress reactivity, and early socioemotional deprivation and maltreatment; she is particularly interested in understanding how children and adolescents from early stress environments cognitively adapt to their current environment, and she plans to use fMRI procedures to identify possible neural mechanisms supporting potential adaptations.

Madeline Harms

Madeline is working with Dr. Thomas to investigate the neural correlates of facial emotion processing in school-age children. Madeline graduated from Wellesley College in 2008, where she did research on the relationship between executive function and theory of mind in preschool children. She then worked for two years at the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, part of the National Institute of Mental Health. There, she researched behavior and brain development in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. Broadly, she is interested in potential relationships between emotion processing, executive function, and social cognition.

Amanda Hodel

Amanda Hodel is a second-year graduate student at the Institute of Child Development. Amanda received a BS in Child Psychology and a BS in Statistics from the University of Minnesota in 2008. She is primarily interested in the role of early experience in brain development, particularly in the domains of attention and learning.