Dr. Ablow's research interests are in the area of prenatal and postnatal stress, prenatal and parental mental health, intergenerational transmission of well-being, attachment relationships, social determinants of health, and parent-infant prevention and intervention. Her research examines the effects of factors such as prenatal mental health, stress, early adversity, and nutrition on fetal development, infant emotional regulation and neurodevelopment. Her research program includes the study of populations exposed to diverse forms of early life stress, disproportionately represented in populations of low socio-economic status including infants of caregivers with depression and poor nutrition. Ultimately, the goal is to identify particularly sensitive periods of development and forms of stress that, when targeted for preventative intervention, will mitigate the negative health effects of early life stress. Clinically, her focus is on the perinatal period. She is involved in the development and facilitation of prenatal groups for pregnant individuals at risk for depression, mindfulness-based parenting program of the early postnatal period, and video feedback dyadic parenting interventions for the promotion of attachment and emotional regulation. Dr. Ablow is also a licensed psychologist and a certified Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) clinician on the international CPP roster. For further information, please visit Dr. Ablow's website.

Dr. Ablow is not accepting new graduate students for Fall 2025.

Selected Publications:

Ablow, J.C. & Sullivan, E. (2020). Pregnancy during a pandemic: The stress of COVID-19 on pregnant women and new mothers is showing. The Conversation, September 23, 2020.

Sun, X., Measelle, J.R., & Ablow, J.C. (2021). Predicting child effortful control: An integrative analysis of child, physiological, familial, and community factors. Developmental Psychobiology, 63(2), 277-290. doi:10.1002/dev.22005

Ablow, J.C. & Measelle, J.R. (2019). The Multitasking Reality of the Parenting Brain. Parenting: Science and Practice, 19(1-2), 86-89.

Measelle, J.R. & Ablow, J.C. (2018). Contributions of early adversity to pro-inflammatory phenotype in infancy: The buffer provided by attachment security. Attachment and Human Development, 20, 1-23. doi:10.1080/14616734.2017.1362657

David, J., Measelle, J.R., Ostlund, B.D., & Ablow, J.C. (2018). Association between early life adversity and inflammation during infancy. Developmental Psychobiology, 59, 696-702. doi:10.1002/dev.21538

Fong, M., Measelle, J.R., Conradt, E., & Ablow, J.C. (2017). Links Between Early Baseline Cortisol, Attachment Classification, and Problem Behaviors: A Test of Differential Susceptibility Versus Diathesis-Stress. Infant Behavior and Development, 46, 158-168. doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2017.01.005

Ostlund, B.D., Measelle, J., Laurent, H., Conradt, E., & Ablow, J.C. (2017) Shaping emotion regulation: Attunement, symptomatology, and stress recovery within mother-infant dyads. Developmental Psychobiology, 59(1), 15-25. doi:10.1002/dev.21448

Wright, D.B., Laurent, H.K., & Ablow, J.C. (2017). Mothers who were neglected in childhood show differences in neural response to their infant's cry. Child Maltreatment, 22(2), 158-166. doi:10.1177/1077559516683503

Measelle, J.R., David, J., & Ablow, J.C. (2017). Increased levels of inflammation among infants with disorganized histories of attachment. Behavioural Brain Research, 325, 260-267. doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2016.12.001

Laurent, H.K. & Ablow, J.C. (2013). A face a mother could love: Depression-related maternal neural responses to infant emotion faces. Social Neuroscience, 8, 228-239. doi:10.1080/17470919.2012.762039

Ablow, J.C., Marks, A.K., Feldman, S.S., & Huffman, L.C. (2013). Associations between first-time expectant women's representations of attachment and their physiological reactivity to cry. Child Development, 84, 1373-1391. doi:10.1111/cdev.12135

Conradt, E., Measelle, J.R. & Ablow, J.C. (2013). Poverty, problem behavior and promise: Differential susceptibility among infants reared in poverty. Psychological Science, 24, 235-242. doi:10.1177/0956797612457381

Laurent, H.K. & Ablow, J.C. (2012). A cry in the dark: Depressed mothers show reduced neural activation to their own infant’s cry. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7, 125-134. doi:10.1093/san/nsq091

Laurent, H.K., Ablow, J.C. & Measelle, J.R. (2011). Risky shifts: How the timing and course of mothers' depressive symptoms across the perinatal period shape their own and infant's stress response. Development and Psychopathology, 23, 521-538. doi:10.1017/S0954579411000083

Conradt, E., & Ablow, J.C. (2010). Infant physiological response to the Still-Face Paradigm: Contributions of maternal sensitivity and infants’ early regulatory behavior. Infant Behavior and Development, 33, 251-265. doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2010.01.001