Department of Psychology
Department of Psychology
Stefanie Sequeira

Stefanie Sequeira

Assistant Professor of Psychology
zbp2sm@virginia.edu
Research Areas

Office Address: 226K Gilmer Hall
Personal Website
Lab Website 

Biography

Dr. Sequeira studies how social threat and reward processes develop during childhood and adolescence and are associated with the development of psychopathology, with a focus on anxiety disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) in youth with anxiety disorders. She integrates ecologically valid methods at multiple levels of analysis into her work, including ecological momentary assessment (EMA), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and eye-tracking. Taking a multimethod approach, Dr. Sequeira pursues three interrelated lines of research: 1) Developing and testing novel measures to study social threat and reward processes (e.g., how the brain responds to peer rejection/acceptance; how youth perceive social threat or reward on social media);  2) Linking brain and social behavior to better understand the development of psychopathology, and 3) Investigating associations between reward functioning, anxiety, and STBs during adolescence.

Representative Publications

  • Sequeira, S.L., Forbes, E.E., Hanson, J.L. & Silk, J.S. (2022). Positive valence systems in youth anxiety: A scoping review. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 102588.

  • Kaurin, A., Sequeira, S. L., Ladouceur, C. D., McKone, K. M., Rosen, D., Jones, N., ... & Silk, J. S. (2022). Modeling sensitivity to social threat in adolescent girls: A psychoneurometric approach. Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, 131(6), 641.

  • Sequeira, S.L, Silk. J.S, Ladouceur, C.D., Hanson, J.L., Ryan, N.D., Morgan, J.K., McMakin, D., Kendall, P.C., Dahl, R.E., & Forbes, E.E. (2021). Association of neural reward circuitry function with response to psychotherapy in youths with anxiety disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry, 178(4), 343-351.

  • Sequeira, S. L., Silk, J. S., Edershile, E. A., Jones, N. P., Hanson, J. L., Forbes, E. E., & Ladouceur, C. D. (2021). From scanners to cell-phones: Neural and real-world responses to social evaluation in adolescent girls. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 1, 13.

  • Sequeira, S.L.*, Rosen, D.K.*, Silk, J.S., Jones, N.P., & Ladouceur, C.D. (2021). Linking fronto-amygdala functional connectivity to in vivo attentional biases towards social threat in adolescence. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 49, 100960. *Authors contributed equally.