The main focus of our research programme is on adolescence, a key transitional period in human development. The programme puts emphasis on combined experimental behavioural and neural analysis of normative transitions and deviations in adolescent development.

The section Developmental and Educational Psychology consists of more than 45 people, who are mainly involved in education and research.

PhD defence

How are interests embedded and experienced in daily life and to what extent can their origin and development be understood in terms of this contextualization?

Boys with autism are more prone to develop physical complaints, depression and aggressive behaviour. Psychologists at Leiden University have discovered that this is mainly related to rumination. Publication in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Eveline Crone wrote a new edition of

In the MS Cognitietour, psychologists and neuroscientists from Leiden University discuss the latest scientific knowledge with MS patients and their loved ones. This leads to insights: 'One lady told how much stress she felt from all those caregivers around her bed.'

The brains of adolescents react more strongly to receiving rewards. This can lead to risky behaviour, but research in Leiden has shown that it also has a positive purpose: it makes learning easier. The publication of an article on the research findings led to a lot of media attention.

As young people’s friendships improve, their mental resilience also increases. This is according to research conducted by Anne-Laura van Harmelen, Professor of Brain, Safety and Resilience at Leiden University.

How is the development of physiological responses to social evaluation in adolescence affected by other normative developments, such as pubertal, socio-cognitive and psychosocial development? Are social anxiety and public speaking anxiety associated with characteristic patterns of stress responses…

Issue 1

Cultural and individual differences

Anke Ramakers, Assistant Professor in criminology at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology at Leiden Law School, together with Finnish researchers Mikko Aaltonen and Pekka Martikainen, has published an article in the Elsevier journal 'Advances in Life Course Research', on the role of labour…

Professor of Neurocognitive Developmental Psychology Eveline Crone will receive an Ammodo KNAW Award. This was announced by Ammodo, an institute for arts and sciences, and the Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) on 25 January.

Professor Eveline Crone joined the Scientific Council of the European Research Council (ERC) on 13 January.

Scientists in Leiden are looking for signals in blood samples to predict whether patients will develop serious COVID-19 symptoms or not. Based on that knowledge, they will be able to propose targeted therapies to prevent serious symptoms. They hope to come up with the first results within the week.

Mapping the neural mechanisms underlying social motivations of adolescents and adults

How adolescents perceive parenting is related to their mood. Differences between the perspectives of parents and adolescents are also of importance for adolescents’ mood. That is what research by Loes Janssen and her Leiden University colleagues in Clinical Psychology shows. Open Access publication…

What are the often invisible cognitive consequences of multiple sclerosis? Maureen van Dam mapped these out during her doctoral research. 'People usually notice the physical symptoms, but the cognitive symptoms deserve at least as much attention.'

People who have taken antibiotics in the past three months pay more attention to negative facial expressions, according to research by postdoc Katerina Johnson and assistant professor Laura Steenbergen. This may explain how antibiotics increase the risk of developing depression.

Peer-mentored cognitive behavioral therapy for adolescents with mild intellectual disability and anxiety disorder

Primary Objective: The primary aim of the proposed RCT is to evaluate whether LF-TLP in blended form as an indicated prevention for anxiety complaints is more (cost-) effective than TAU according to the NHG guideline Anxiety. We hypothesize that in comparison to TAU, LF-TLP will result in a significantly…

How do young people react when an unknown person gets under their skin in an online game? A sense of control over their social environment can prevent young people from quickly resorting to anger in such a situation, development psychologists Sheida Novin, Carolien Rieffe and colleagues discovered.…

Does the public speaking anxiety that many youngsters experience originates from specific characteristics in their earlier development?

Predictors of work functioning in persons with multiple sclerosis

How do digital technologies affect adolescent mental health and resilience? How do we foster a secure online environment? How should we deal with increasing rates of online crimes among adolescents? During the mini-symposium ‘The effect of the online world on adolescents’, presented by the interdisciplinary…

A step-by-step approach to building confidence in anxiety-prone young children.

Our vision of stress is starting to change fundamentally. We can suffer stress without even being aware of it, while sleeping as wall as during the day. Professor of Psychology Jos Brosschot will discuss this phenomenon in his inaugural lecture on 2 December.

In the online panel discussion of ESOF 2022 ‘The effect of the online world on adolescents’, together with Amy Orben, Professor Eveline Crone, Sterre van Riel, Professor Anne-Laura van Harmelen and Professor Jan Sleutels, Professor Ton Liefaard shared his research on adolescents and the online world…

The aim of our research program is to better understand the etiology and course of mood, anxiety and stress-related disorders, such as depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We investigate both the transdiagnostic mechanisms underlying these disorders and work on improving the treatments…

A restless night aggravates symptoms in those experiencing suicidal thoughts, as psychologists Liia Kivelä and Niki Antypa have found in their study on the short-term risk factors of suicide. They argue that targeting sleep could thus be essential for suicide prevention.

Eveline Crone surmises that adolescence also has a positive effect on social development. She believes, for example, that it is in adolescence that young people learn the skills of cooperation, sharing and helpfulness. She will be researching this hypothesis in the coming period with an ERC Consolidator…

Our mission is to recognise and treat stress and anxiety in children as early as possible, by connecting scientific research, clinical practice and education.

With a starting grant of the European Research Council (ERC) for promising young researchers, Eiko Fried aims to develop a personalised early warning system, that will reliably forecast depression before it occurs. Fried (Clinical Psychology) talks about this WARN-D, promising to radically transform…

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated measures during the first lockdown in the Netherlands in March 2020 caused major changes in daily life. Parents worked from home and children followed school online. Therefore, the families were forced to spend more time together. This is particularly difficult for…

Extensive research is being conducted at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology on developments in sentencing and punitive measures and how judges and other actors in the criminal justice system reach decisions. Another focus area is how punishments and measures are implemented and the effect…