Simone Dobbelaar

Simone Dobbelaar is a postdoc in the Developmental and Educational Psychology department at Leiden University. Her work is focused on the behavioral and neural development of social competence across childhood and adolescence, including prosocial behavior, aggression regulation and reward sensitivity. In addition, she aims to understand the role of the social environment on social development and mental health outcomes, with a specific focus on peers and parents. To answer these questions, Simone studies development across different contexts, on multiple levels of explanation, using different types of scientific methods (e.g., experimental tasks, fMRI, questionnaires). Within GUTS, she will dive into the effects of peer relations on social and cognitive development in the transition from late adolescence to early adulthood, by combining behavioral, neuroimaging and sociometric data.

Photo: Alexander Santos Lima