Kristin Valentino
Director, Shaw Center for Children and Families
Professor and William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families Collegiate Chair
Faculty Fellow, Eck Institute for Global Health; Faculty Fellow, Institute for Educational Initiatives

- Office
- E560 Corbett Family Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556 - kvalent1@nd.edu
Additional Areas: Developmental
Research and teaching interests
Research interests: child maltreatment, developmental psychopathology, early adversity, parent-child interactions, memory, interventions, racial discrimination Teaching interests: community-based learning, practica, service-learning
Biography
Dr. Kristin Valentino is a Professor of Psychology and the Director of the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Valentino is also a licensed clinical psychologist. Dr. Valentino’s program of research addresses how adversity affects child development with a focus on the caregiving behaviors that may promote risk and/or resilience among maltreating families. She evaluates how interventions may be designed to improve caregiving and, in turn, to improve developmental outcomes for maltreated children. Guiding her research is a developmental psychopathology perspective which emphasizes the interface between normal and atypical development and employs a multiple-levels-of analysis approach towards the study of child development and child psychopathology. Dr. Valentino is the President-Elect for the American Psychological Association Division 37 Section on Child Maltreatment. She serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Child Maltreatment and as a member of the National Institute of Health’s Psychosocial Development, Risk, and Prevention Study Section.
Education
Ph.D., University of Rochester
A.B., Georgetown University
Approach to Mentoring
I am committed to the mentoring of undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students to train and inspire the next generation of psychological scientists. In my mentoring relationships I value students’ autonomy and I aim to support students in identifying and achieving their individual goals. I work to create a lab community which honors scientific integrity and rigor, respects the dignity of all lab members and research participants, and fosters collaboration and cooperation to achieve our goals and make meaningful contributions to the field of developmental psychopathology.Representative Publications
Valentino, K., Speidel, R.*, Fondren, K.,* Behrens, B.,* Edler, K.,* Cote, K.,* & Cummings, E.M. (2022). "Longitudinal effect of Reminiscing and Emotion Training on child maladjustment in the context of maltreatment and maternal depressive symptoms." Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 50, 13-25.
Valentino, K., Speidel, R.*, & Lawson, M+. (2021). "Developmental and intervention- related change in autobiographical memory specificity in maltreated children: Indirect effects of maternal reminiscing." Child Development, 92: e977-e996.
Valentino, K., Hibel, L.C., Speidel, R.*, Fondren, K.*, & Ugarte, E. (2021). "The effects of maltreatment, intimate partner violence, and Reminiscing and Emotion Training on children’s diurnal cortisol over time." Development & Psychopathology, 33(3), 868- 884. https://doi.org/10.1017/S095457942000019X
Valentino, K., Cummings, E.M., Borkowski, J., Hibel, L.C., Lefever, J., & Lawson, M.+ (2019). "Efficacy of a Reminiscing and Emotion Training Intervention on Maltreating Families with Preschool Aged Children." Developmental Psychology, 55(11), 2365-2378. doi: 10.1037/dev0000792
Valentino, K. (2017). "Relational Interventions for Maltreated Children." Child Development, 88, 359-367. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12735
*Denotes graduate student; ** denotes undergraduate student; + denotes postdoctoral fellow author at time of submission.