Directory

Nancy McElwain's directory photo.

Nancy McElwain

Research Affiliate

Primary Affiliation

Biologically Informed Artificial Intelligence

Affiliations

Status Part-time Faculty

Home Department of Human Development and Family Studies

Phone 244-7168

Email mcelwn@illinois.edu

Address 1612 Beckman Institute, 405 North Mathews Avenue

  • Biography

    Dr. Nancy McElwain is a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

    Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Illinois, Dr. McElwain received a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Developmental Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    Her research focuses on social and emotional development during the first five years of life. In particular, Dr. McElwain investigates the dynamic early-life interactions between parents and children that shape children’s developing abilities to regulate stress. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines neuroscience, psychophysiology, linguistics, and developmental psychology.

    Dr. McElwain teaches courses on behavioral research methods and social-emotional development, and she currently serves on the Editorial Board of the American Psychologist.

    Education

    • Ph.D., psychology, University of Michigan, 1999

  • Research

    Research Areas:

    • Neuroscience

    • Psychophysiology

    • Linguistics

    • Developmental Psychology

    Research Interests:

    • Physiological and neural correlates of infant-mother attachment

    • Emotion-related dynamics of parent-child interactions

    • Maternal speech prosody and children's stress regulation

    • Parental socialization of emotion

    • Family-friend linkages and children's social-emotional competence

    Dr. McElwain advances understanding of the dynamic early-life interactions between parents and children that shape children’s developing abilities to regulate stress. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines neuroscience, psychophysiology, linguistics, and developmental psychology. Through investigating stress regulation during early development, she aims to promote healthy parent-child relationships and children’s long-term social and emotional well-being.

  • 2024

    • Associations between infant amygdala functional connectivity and social engagement following a stressor: A preliminary investigation Hu, Y., Chen, H., Li, X., Larsen, R. J., Sutton, B. P., Gao, W. and McElwain, N. L., Jan 2024, In: Developmental science. 27, 1, e13418.
    • Early Mother-Child Interaction Flexibility Predicts Adolescent Psychological Adjustment Li, X., McElwain, N. L. and Frantz, K. M. T., 2024, (Accepted/In press) In: Journal of youth and adolescence.
    • Evaluating Users' Experiences of a Child Multimodal Wearable Device: Mixed Methods Approach McElwain, N. L., Fisher, M. C., Nebeker, C., Bodway, J. M., Islam, B. and Hasegawa-Johnson, M., Jan 2024, In: JMIR Human Factors. 11, 1, e49316.
    • Maternal autonomy support and intrusive control in the United States and China: Moment-to-moment associations with preschoolers’ agency and defeat. Chen, X., McElwain, N. L., Pomerantz, E. M. and Wang, M., Feb 29 2024, In: Developmental psychology. 60, 6, p. 1016-1027 12 p.
    • Preliminary Technical Validation of LittleBeats™: A Multimodal Sensing Platform to Capture Cardiac Physiology, Motion, and Vocalizations Islam, B., McElwain, N. L., Li, J., Davila, M. I., Hu, Y., Hu, K., Bodway, J. M., Dhekne, A., Roy Choudhury, R. and Hasegawa-Johnson, M., Feb 2024, In: Sensors. 24, 3, 901.

    2023

    • Classification of Infant Sleep/Wake States: Cross-Attention among Large Scale Pretrained Transformer Networks using Audio, ECG, and IMU Data Chang, K. C., Hasegawa-Johnson, M., McElwain, N. L. and Islam, B., 2023, 2023 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference, APSIPA ASC 2023. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., p. 2370-2377 8 p. (2023 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference, APSIPA ASC 2023).
    • Functional neural network connectivity at 3 months predicts infant-mother dyadic flexibility during play at 6 months Li, X., Chen, H., Hu, Y., Larsen, R. J., Sutton, B. P., Mcelwain, N. L. and Gao, W., Jul 1 2023, In: Cerebral Cortex. 33, 13, p. 8321-8332 12 p., bhad117.
    • Towards Robust Family-Infant Audio Analysis Based on Unsupervised Pretraining of Wav2vec 2.0 on Large-Scale Unlabeled Family Audio Li, J., Hasegawa-Johnson, M. and McElwain, N. L., 2023, In: Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH. 2023-August, p. 1035-1039 5 p.

    2022

    • Dynamic Fluctuations in Maternal Cardiac Vagal Tone Moderate Moment-to-Moment Associations Between Children’s Negative Behavior and Maternal Emotional Support Ravindran, N., McElwain, N. L., Berry, D. J. and Kramer, L. F., 2022, In: Developmental psychology. 58, 2, p. 286-296 11 p.
    • Interactive Contribution of Observed Mother-Youth Emotional Climate and Youth Physiology: A Biopsychosocial Approach to Understanding Youth Coping With Peer Stress Li, X., Frantz, K. M. T. and McElwain, N. L., Oct 2022, In: Journal of Early Adolescence. 42, 8, p. 1073-1101 29 p.
    • The role of early attachment and parental presence in adolescent behavioral and neurobiological regulation Rogers, C. R., Chen, X., Kwon, S. J., McElwain, N. L. and Telzer, E. H., Feb 2022, In: Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. 53, 101046.
    • Toddler-mother attachment moderates adolescents' behavioral and neural evaluation of trustworthiness Li, X., Jorgensen, N. A., Mcelwain, N. L. and Telzer, E. H., Sep 1 2022, In: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 17, 9, p. 828-836 9 p.
    • Zoom, Zoom, Baby! Assessing Mother-Infant Interaction During the Still Face Paradigm and Infant Language Development via a Virtual Visit Procedure McElwain, N. L., Hu, Y., Li, X., Fisher, M. C., Baldwin, J. C. and Bodway, J. M., Feb 16 2022, In: Frontiers in Psychology. 12, 734492.

    2021

    • A comparison study on infant-parent voice diarization Zhu, J., Hasegawa-Johnson, M. and McElwain, N. L., 2021, In: ICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings. 2021-June, p. 7178-7182 5 p.
    • Analysis of acoustic and voice quality features for the classification of infant and mother vocalizations Li, J., Hasegawa-Johnson, M. and McElwain, N. L., Oct 2021, In: Speech Communication. 133, p. 41-61 21 p.
    • Mother–child mutually responsive orientation and real-time physiological coordination Hu, Y., McElwain, N. L. and Berry, D., Nov 2021, In: Developmental psychobiology. 63, 7, e22200.

    2020

    • Direct and indirect pathways from maternal and paternal empathy to young children's socioemotional functioning Hu, Y., Emery, H. T., Ravindran, N. and McElwain, N. L., Oct 2020, In: Journal of Family Psychology. 34, 7, p. 825-835 11 p.
    • Dynamics of mother-adolescent and father-Adolescent autonomy and control during a conflict discussion task Ravindran, N., Hu, Y., McElwain, N. L. and Telzer, E. H., 2020, In: Journal of Family Psychology. 34, 3, p. 312-321 10 p.
    • Maternal emotion socialization in early childhood predicts adolescents' amygdala-vmPFC functional connectivity to emotion faces Chen, X., McCormick, E. M., Ravindran, N., McElwain, N. L. and Telzer, E. H., Mar 1 2020, In: Developmental psychology. 56, 3, p. 503-515 13 p.
    • Perceiving Facial Affective Ambiguity: A Behavioral and Neural Comparison of Adolescents and Adults Lee, T. H., Perino, M. T., McElwain, N. L. and Telzer, E. H., 2020, In: Emotion. 20, 3, p. 501-506 6 p.

    2019

    • Alterations in adolescent dopaminergic systems as a function of early mother-toddler attachment: A prospective longitudinal examination McCormick, E. M., McElwain, N. L. and Telzer, E. H., Nov 2019, In: International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience. 78, p. 122-129 8 p.
    • Dynamic bidirectional associations in negative behavior: Mother-toddler interaction during a snack delay Ravindran, N., Berry, D. J. and McElwain, N. L., Jun 2019, In: Developmental psychology. 55, 6, p. 1191-1198 8 p.
    • Emotion understanding and maternal sensitivity as protective factors against hostile attribution bias in anger-prone children Wong, M. S., Chen, X. and McElwain, N. L., Feb 1 2019, In: Social Development. 28, 1, p. 41-56 16 p.
    • Interactive Contributions of Attribution Biases and Emotional Intensity to Child–Friend Interaction Quality During Preadolescence Chen, X., McElwain, N. L. and Lansford, J. E., Jan 1 2019, In: Child development. 90, 1, p. e114-e131
    • Theory of mind as a mechanism linking mother–toddler relationship quality and child–friend interaction during the preschool years McElwain, N. L., Ravindran, N., Emery, H. T. and Swartz, R., Nov 1 2019, In: Social Development. 28, 4, p. 998-1015 18 p.
    • Within-Person Fluctuations in Maternal Sensitivity and Child Functioning: Moderation by Child Temperament Chen, X., McElwain, N. L., Berry, D. J. and Emery, H. T., 2019, In: Journal of Family Psychology. 33, 7, p. 857–867 11 p.

    2018

    • Infant emotional outbursts detection in infant-parent spoken interactions Yijia, X., Allan, H. J. M. and McElwain Nancy, L., 2018, In: Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH. 2018-September, p. 242-246 5 p.
    • Mothers' dispositional distress reactivity as a predictor of maternal support following momentary fluctuations in children's aversive behavior Ravindran, N., McElwain, N. L., Berry, D. J. and Kramer, L. F., Feb 1 2018, In: Developmental psychology. 54, 2, p. 209-219 11 p.

    2016

    • A Mixed Methods Investigation of Maternal Perspectives on Transition Experiences in Early Care and Education Swartz, R. A., Speirs, K. E., Encinger, A. J. and McElwain, N. L., Feb 17 2016, In: Early Education and Development. 27, 2, p. 170-189 20 p.
    • Child-child similarity on attachment and temperament as predictors of positive interaction during acquaintanceship at age 3 McElwain, N. L., Ogolsky, B. G., Engle, J. M., Holland, A. S. and Mitchell, E. T., Sep 1 2016, In: Developmental psychology. 52, 9, p. 1394-1408 15 p.
    • Maternal Supportive Behavior, Cognitive Talk, and Desire/Emotion Talk at 24 Months: Distinct Factors and Differential Antecedents Jessee, A., McElwain, N. L. and Booth-LaForce, C., Apr 2 2016, In: Parenting. 16, 2, p. 63-86 24 p.

    2015

    • Child-Mother Attachment Security and Child Characteristics as Joint Contributors to Young Children's Coping in a Challenging Situation Mcelwain, N. L., Holland, A. S., Engle, J. M., Wong, M. S. and Emery, H. T., Jul 1 2015, In: Infant and Child Development. 24, 4, p. 414-434 21 p.
    • Fostering parents' emotion regulation through a sibling-focused experimental intervention Ravindran, N., Engle, J. M., McElwain, N. L. and Kramer, L., Jun 1 2015, In: Journal of Family Psychology. 29, 3, p. 458-468 11 p.
    • Mothers' electrophysiological, subjective, and observed emotional responding to infant crying: The role of secure base script knowledge Groh, A. M., Roisman, G. I., Haydon, K. C., Bost, K., McElwain, N., Garcia, L. and Hester, C., Nov 1 2015, In: Development and psychopathology. 27, 4, p. 1237-1250 14 p.

    2014

    • Getting acquainted: Actor and partner effects of attachment and temperament on young children's peer behavior McElwain, N. L., Holland, A. S., Engle, J. M. and Ogolsky, B. G., Jun 2014, In: Developmental psychology. 50, 6, p. 1757-1770 14 p.
    • Maternal dispositional empathy and electrodermal reactivity: Interactive contributions to maternal sensitivity with toddler-aged children Emery, H. T., McElwain, N. L., Groh, A. M., Haydon, K. C. and Roisman, G. I., Aug 2014, In: Journal of Family Psychology. 28, 4, p. 505-515 11 p.

    2013

    • Maternal and paternal perceptions of coparenting as a link between marital quality and the parent-toddler relationship Holland, A. S. and McElwain, N. L., Feb 2013, In: Journal of Family Psychology. 27, 1, p. 117-126 10 p.
    • Parental depressive symptoms and marital intimacy at 4.5 years: Joint contributions to mother-child and father-child interaction at 6.5 years Engle, J. M. and McElwain, N. L., Dec 2013, In: Developmental psychology. 49, 12, p. 2225-2235 11 p.

    2012

    • Child anger proneness moderates associations between child-mother attachment security and child behavior with mothers at 33 months McElwain, N. L., Holland, A. S., Engle, J. M. and Wong, M. S., Feb 2012, In: Journal of Family Psychology. 26, 1, p. 76-86 11 p.
    • Preservice teachers' emotion-related regulation and cognition: Associations with teachers' responses to children's emotions in early childhood classrooms Swartz, R. A. and McElwain, N. L., Mar 2012, In: Early Education and Development. 23, 2, p. 202-226 25 p.

    2011

    • Infant-Mother Attachment and Children's Friendship Quality: Maternal Mental-State Talk as an Intervening Mechanism McElwain, N. L., Booth-LaForce, C. and Wu, X., Sep 2011, In: Developmental psychology. 47, 5, p. 1295-1311 17 p.
    • Parental Reactions to Toddlers' Negative Emotions and Child Negative Emotionality as Correlates of Problem Behavior at the Age of Three Engle, J. M. and Mcelwain, N. L., May 2011, In: Social Development. 20, 2, p. 251-271 21 p.
    • Presence and quality of kindergarten children's friendships: Concurrent and longitudinal associations with child adjustment in the early school years Engle, J. M., Mcelwain, N. L. and Lasky, N., Jul 2011, In: Infant and Child Development. 20, 4, p. 365-386 22 p.

    2009

    • Parent, Family, and Child Characteristics: Associations With Mother- and Father-Reported Emotion Socialization Practices Wong, M. S., McElwain, N. L. and Halberstadt, A. G., Aug 2009, In: Journal of Family Psychology. 23, 4, p. 452-463 12 p.

    2007

    • Mother- and father-reported reactions to children's negative emotions: Relations to young children's emotional understanding and friendship quality McElwain, N. L., Halberstadt, A. G. and Volling, B. L., Sep 2007, In: Child development. 78, 5, p. 1407-1425 19 p.

    2006

    • Maternal sensitivity to infant distress and nondistress as predictors of infant-mother attachment security McElwain, N. L. and Booth-Laforce, C., Jun 2006, In: Journal of Family Psychology. 20, 2, p. 247-255 9 p.

    2005

    • Intergenerational transmission of role reversal between parent and child: Dyadic and family systems internal working models Macfie, J., Mcelwain, N. L., Houts, R. M. and Cox, M. J., Mar 2005, In: Attachment and Human Development. 7, 1, p. 51-65 15 p.
    • Preschool children's interactions with friends and older siblings: Relationship specificity and joint contributions to problem behavior McElwain, N. L. and Volling, B. L., Dec 2005, In: Journal of Family Psychology. 19, 4, p. 486-496 11 p.
    • The effect of father-toddler and mother-toddler role reversal on the development of behavior problems in kindergarten Macfie, J., Houts, R. M., McElwain, N. L. and Cox, M. J., 2005, In: Social Development. 14, 3, p. 514-531 18 p.

    2004

    • Attachment security and parental sensitivity during infancy: Associations with friendship quality and false-belief understanding at age 4 McElwain, N. L. and Volling, B. L., Oct 2004, In: Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 21, 5, p. 639-667 29 p.

    2003

    • Differentiating among insecure mother-infant attachment classifications: A focus on child-friend interaction and exploration during solitary play at 36 months McElwain, N. L., Cox, M. J., Burchinal, M. R. and Macfie, J., Jun 2003, In: Attachment and Human Development. 5, 2, p. 136-164 29 p.

    2002

    • Concurrent and longitudinal associations among preschool boys’ conflict management, disruptive behavior, and peer rejection McElwain, N. L., Olson, S. L. and Volling, B. L., Jul 2002, In: Early Education and Development. 13, 3, p. 245-263 19 p.
    • Emotion regulation in context: The jealousy complex between young siblings and its relations with child and family characteristics Volling, B. L., McElwain, N. L. and Miller, A. L., 2002, In: Child development. 73, 2, p. 581-600 20 p.
    • Parents' emotional availability and infant emotional competence: Predictors of parent-infant attachment and emerging self-regulation Volling, B. L., McElwain, N. L., Notaro, P. C. and Herrera, C., Dec 2002, In: Journal of Family Psychology. 16, 4, p. 447-465 19 p.
    • Relating individual control, social understanding, and gender to child-friend interaction: A relationships perspective McElwain, N. L. and Volling, B. L., 2002, In: Social Development. 11, 3, p. 362-385 24 p.

    2000

    • Sibling jealousy in a triadic context with mothers and fathers Miller, A. L., Volling, B. L. and McElwain, N. L., 2000, In: Social Development. 9, 4, p. 433-457 25 p.

    1999

    • Depressed mood and marital conflict: Relations to maternal and paternal intrusiveness with one-year-old infants McElwain, N. L. and Volling, B. L., 1999, In: Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. 20, 1, p. 63-83 21 p.