dr. (Rianne) R Kok

Biography

**Rianne Kok is an associate professor at the Department of Psychology, Education and Child Studies, specialized in clinical child and family studies. She is member of the EUR network Peer Relations Researchers (PRR-EUR).** She graduated at the University of Amsterdam in Clinical Neuropsychology and received her PhD at the Centre for Child and Family Studies at Leiden University.  Her scientific work bridges a variety of disciplines, including clinical and cognitive psychology, and child and family studies. She endeavours to explore how early social relationships and interactions shape the regulation of cognitive and emotional processes that help one to function according to social norms and standards in society. She is fascinated by the question why some children struggle with self-regulation more so than others, and propose that these regulation differences can be key to explain the intergenerational patterns we observe in psychiatric problems, problem behaviours, but also in socio-economic adversities. Overall, her work contributes to a better understanding of the social origins of children’s regulation of behaviour, emotions, and cognition. She studies these processes in an ecologically valid way to better understand children’s ability to socially adapt in naturalistic settings. Specific research topics vary from infant emotion regulation, to child inhibition, delay of gratification, and frustration tolerance, to parent and child lying. Rianne Kok specializes in using observational paradigms and coding schemes to study the interaction and (dyadic) regulation of parents and children. She is involved in two studies on parenting capacities of high-risk mothers in relation to the development of self-regulation capacities of their infants, in collaboration with the Erasmus Medical Center. With the 2016 EUR Fellowship grant she conducts an innovative study on child regulation in social contexts, using direct observations of behavior of children and social partners at home and in schools. With a unique study design and sophisticated observation tools, she studies how social interactions shape regulation in children and determine early school success, in order to provide practical advice for kindergarten teachers on how to guide children in making a successful transition to formal schooling.  Rianne Kok coordinates courses on Child Behavior- and Learning Problems (Bachelor level), Attunement between caregiving and education contexts (Bachelor level) and Advanced Diagnostics (Master level). Moreover, she is involved in the development and coordination of the academic writing skills curriculum, and supervises BA-level and MA-level students for their internship and thesis.