Grace Binion

Grace Binion

Assistant Professor, Psychology

Curriculum Vitae
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Dr. Binion's interest in the intergenerational transmission of mental health symptoms and how children come to understand the minds of others after experiencing early life adversity began long before her postsecondary education. Pursuing these interests, she earned a B.S. in psychology at Georgia Gwinnett College. Upon graduating, she relocated to the west coast to pursue her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Oregon. In graduate school, Dr. Binion worked with Dr. Maureen Zalewski to examine the social-emotional development of preschoolers whose mothers have elevated features of Borderline Personality Disorder. Alongside this research, she pursued training in advanced statistical and methodological approaches for addressing the complex developmental and causal questions inherent in her substantive research. She also received clinical training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and comprehensive diagnostic assessment of children and adolescents. Dr. Binion then completed her clinical psychology doctoral internship at the Marcus Autism Center at Emory University Department of Pediatrics. On internship, she specialized in the assessment of young children showing signs of autism as well as in early intervention and prevention for toddlers who experience social communication delays. During this time, she also engaged in research related to the measurement of emotion regulation in young children on the autism spectrum and the reliability of diagnostic assessments during the COVID-19 pandemic. She subsequently completed her postdoctoral fellowship through the Emory University School of Medicine, where she continued her research and further specialized in parent-mediated interventions for young children. Dr. Binion joined the Furman faculty in the fall of 2022 where she is excited to enrich students' educational experiences both inside and outside of the classroom. In particular, she is passionate about helping students connect their enthusiasm for psychological research questions to the math and methods used to address these questions. At Furman, her research addresses developmental psychopathology questions. In particular, her research addresses: (1) how parents' mental health symptoms are related to children's social-cognitive and social-emotional development; (2) how social-emotional and social-cognitive factors support children's resilience in the context of early life adversity; and (3) how children's emerging social competence interacts with early life adversity to influence long-term risk for psychopathology. The overarching goal of this research is the development of brief, accessible, effective intervention and prevention programs to support parents and children at elevated risk for developing mental illness. In her spare time, Dr. Binion enjoys voraciously consuming information about a wide range of topics (via documentaries, television, books, and podcasts), listening to music, running, traveling, and spending time with her husband, stepson, and two spoiled cats.

Education

  • Clinical Psychology Internship, Marcus Autism Center at Emory University Department of Pediatrics
  • Ph.D., University of Oregon
  • M.S., University of Oregon
  • B.S., Georgia Gwinnett College

Research Interests

Broadly, Dr. Binion investigates children's development following experiences of early life adversity. She is specifically interested in the ways in which having a parent who experiences significant mental health symptoms shapes/alters typical social, emotional, and cognitive developmental processes to influence risk for psychopathology. She is also interested in the complex causal relationships between parental mental health, additional risk-conveying experiences (e.g., residential instability, poverty, traumatic experiences), and children's developmental outcomes. Dr. Binion is particularly interested in the intra- and interpersonal factors which promote resilient social and mental health functioning. Her research has thus far addressed children's emerging emotion regulation, executive function, and theory of mind abilities and has focused primarily on the preschool period.

Publications

  • Hendrix, N., Binion, G., Kushner, E. & Pickard, K., (in press). A systematic review of emotion regulation in parent-mediated interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorder. Frontiers in Psychiatry.
  • Lee, A., O’Brien, J., Binion, G., Lewis, J., & Zalewski, M. (2022). Brief Report: Supportive Emotion Socializations Mitigates Risk Between Maternal Emotion Dysregulation and Preschooler Emotion Regulation. Journal of Child and Family Studies
  • Moshontz, H., Binion, G., Walton, H., Brown, B. & Syed, M. (2021). A guide to posting and managing preprints. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 4(2)
  • Lewis, J., Binion, G., Rogers, M., & Zalewski, M. (2020). The associations of maternal emotion dysregulation and early child dissociative behaviors. Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, 21(2), 203-216.
  • Gamache-Martin, C., Zalewski, M., Binion, G., & O’Brien, J. (2018) Operant reinforcement and the development of emotion dysregulation. In S. E. Crowell & T. P. Beauchaine (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of Emotion Dysregulation. New York, New York: Oxford University Press
  • Zalewski M., Cummins, N., Binion, G., Lewis, J., & O’Brien, J. (2018) Relations of maternal borderline personality disorder features with preschooler executive functioning and theory of mind. Journal of Personality Disorders, 1-12
  • Binion, G. & Zalewski, M. (2017) Maternal emotion dysregulation and the functional organization of preschooler’s emotional expressions and regulatory behaviors. Emotion, 18(3), 386-399, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000319
  • Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251), aac4716.
  • Open Science Collaboration. (2014). The Reproducibility Project: A model of large-scale collaboration for empirical research on reproducibility. In V. Stodden, F. Leisch, & R. Peng (Eds.), Implementing Reproducible Computational Research (A Volume in The R Series). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

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