![]() | Mark Wade Assistant Professor email: m.wade@utoronto.ca Department: Applied Psychology and Human Development | |
Research Overview Dr. Wade studies the effects of early life stress and adversity on children's mental health and cognitive functioning. To this end, he is interested in broad metrics of social disadvantage (e.g., poverty, socioeconomic status) and more egregious forms of child maltreatment, including severe psychosocial neglect among children raised in deprived early environments. He is part of a team of investigators who have been examining the brain and behavioural development of children raised in Romanian orphanages and who spent their early years without a primary caregiver or attachment figure. As a trained clinician, Dr. Wade is interested in uncovering both shared and unique mechanisms by which early life stress and adversity get "under the skin" and "into the mind" to impact mental health and cognitive functioning. In the latter domain, Dr. Wade is interested in key developmental competencies such as executive functioning and social cognition, and how deficits in these abilities serve as "couriers" of early risk for later psychopathology. Finally, Dr. Wade applies a broad biopsychosocial lens to the study of development, and is therefore interested in integrating various biological and behavioural methods for studying development, including genetic, physiological, and brain-based measurement to better understand the complex pathways through which early experience translates into individual differences in psychological and cognitive functioning in children and adolescence. Teaching Overview Dr. Wade is interested in teaching both developmental and clinical child and adolescent psychology. His primary area of focus is developmental psychopathology and clinical assessment and intervention with children and adolescents. This coming year, Dr. Wade will be teaching: APD1200H Foundations of Human Development and Education APD3240H Advanced Social and Emotional Assessment Techniques Representative Publications
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