Laura Nelson Darling, M.A. is a doctoral student and clinician within the Clinical Psychology program at Boston University. She has a background in evidence-based treatments for children, adolescents, and adults with a variety of psychological disorders, including social anxiety, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, specific phobias, depression, and selective mutism. Prior to her graduate studies, Laura was a clinical research coordinator working primarily with children on the autism spectrum in the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Laura’s research focuses on evidence-based interventions for anxiety and emotion dysregulation in childhood and the psychophysiological mechanisms underlying risk and treatment response.  Her dissertation is evaluating the use of a novel storybook intervention to teach caregivers and their children fundamental psychoeducational principles about anxiety, avoidance, and exposure-based treatment, as well
as evidence-based strategies for implementing caregiver-led exposures “at home.”  This study will inform the development and efficacy of briefer, focused, low-intensity treatments applicable to a range of early childhood anxiety symptoms and disorders, as well as the development of scalable community prevention efforts for child anxiety. Additionally, she contributes to several ongoing research projects including a study evaluating shared decision making in youth psychotherapy, and a multi-site pragmatic trial comparing the effectiveness of online- and therapist-administered CBT for youth with anxiety in pediatric health care settings.

Selected Publications

Pincus, D.B., Nelson Darling, L. & Leyfer, O. (in press). Delivering treatment for panic disorder in adolescence with flexibility and fidelity.  In P. Kendall (Ed.), Flexibility within Fidelity. NY:  Oxford University Press.

Fenley, A.R., Nelson Darling, L., Schild, J.S., & Langer, D. (in press). Depression in Children and Adolescents. In G. Asmundson (Ed.), Comprehensive Clinical Psychology: Volume 5. Children & Adolescents: Clinical Formulation & Treatment, 2nd Edition. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Comer, J.S., Nelson Darling, L., del Buston, C., Musser, E.D., & Pincus, D. (in press) Stress and stress management in children and adolescents. In P. Lehrer & R. Woolfolk (Eds.), Principles and practice of stress management, 4th edition. NY: Guilford.

Faja, S., & Nelson Darling, L. (2019). Variation in restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests relates to inhibitory control and shifting in children with autism spectrum disorder. Autism, 23(5), 1262–1272. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361318804192

Ronfard, S., Nelson, L.J., Dunham, Y., & Blake, P. R. (2019). How children use accuracy information to infer informant intentions and to make reward decisions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 177, 100–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2018.07.017

Davoodi, T., Nelson, L.J., & Blake, P.R. (2018). Children’s conceptions of ownership for self and other: Categorical ownership versus strength of claim. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13163