W. Roger Mills-Koonce, Ph.D.

Roger Mills-Koonce is a research scientist at the Center for Developmental Science. Additionally, he is Co-Director of the NICHD Family Life Project and Assistant Director of the Behavioral Science Research Division at the Center for Developmental Science. He completed his Ph.D. in developmental psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005. Although his interests include multiple levels of functioning within the family system, his primary areas of research focus on the effects of stress and coping as predictors of parenting behavior and the role of attachment relationships as contexts for family functioning. In each area of research, he is interested in the cognitive and psychophysiological aspects of emotion and emotion regulation for both parents and children. His current work, funded by NICHD, examines previous findings on contextual stress (poverty and geographic isolation) and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis (HPA) functioning in adults and extends that research to examine the transmission of this association from parent to offspring. In his future work, Dr. Mills-Koonce hopes to extend this line of research to examine cultural variations in stress, coping, and parenting, as well as examining other members and levels of the family system.

Selected publications:
Mills-Koonce, W. R., Propper, C. B., Barnett, M., Gariépy, J.-L., Moore, G., Calkins, S., Cox, M. J. [under review]. Psychobiological Support for Sensitive Parenting: Interactions between of the HPA and Vagal Systems.

Mills-Koonce, W. R., Gariépy, J.-L., Sutton, K., Cox, M. J. [under review]. Infant and Parent Factors Associated with Early Maternal Sensitivity: A Caregiver-Attachment Systems Approach.

Mills-Koonce, W. R., Gariépy, J.-L., Sutton, K., Cox, M. J. [under review]. Developmental trajectories of sensitive care for mothers of children with differing attachment strategies at 36 months.

Mills-Koonce, W. R., Barnett, M., Appleyard, K., Deng, M. & Cox, M. J. [under review]. Adult attachment as a protective factor for parenting among mothers at elevated psychological risk.

Hill, A. L., Mills-Koonce, W. R., Propper, C. B., Calkins, S. D., Granger, D., Moore, G., Gariepy, J.-L., & Cox, M. J. [under review]. Physiological responses to the Strange Situation Paradigm: Vagal withdrawal, salivary alpha-amylase and salivary cortisol in infants and mothers as a function of attachment status.

W. Roger Mills-Koonce, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Center for Developmental Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
100 E. Franklin CB # 8115
Chapel Hill NC 27599-8115

919-843-0438
rmk@email.unc.edu