Evin Aktar
Senior assistant professor
- Name
- Dr. E. Aktar
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 5228
- e.aktar@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0002-2942-171X
Evin Aktar studies the environmental pathways in the transmission of emotional disorders (depression and anxiety) from parents to children.
More information about Evin Aktar
News
-
As a parent, you have a big influence on your child’s anxiety (though there’s no need to worry about it) -
‘Scary, huh?’ – The power of parental ‘fear talk’ -
Veni subsidies for sixteen Leiden researchers -
Four Leiden University researchers receive Rubicon Grants -
Social Science Matters: How should we discuss terrorism in our schools?
PhD candidates
Evin Aktar studies the environmental pathways in the transmission of emotional disorders (depression and anxiety) from parents to children.
Research
Emotional disorders (depression and anxiety) run in families. Parents with emotional disorders may transmit anxiety to their offspring not only via genes but also in daily interactions, via social learning, by exposing their child to facial, bodily, and verbal signals of negative emotions in situations that are novel, ambiguous, or potentially threatening. Aktar studies the mechanisms and processes of everyday parent-to-offspring transmission of negative emotion and its prevention. This approach synthesizes insights into social fear learning from developmental, clinical, social, cognitive, and biological perspectives in lab-based studies. Aktar's ultimate ambition is to generate easy-to-learn and easy-to-implement parental strategies to prevent or reduce everyday intergenerational transmission of anxiety.
Teaching
Aktar is the coordinator of the course 'Advanced Topics in Experimental Psychology' and teaches workgroups in this course and in 'Experimental Clinical Psychology'. Furthermore, she supervises bachelor and master theses of Psychology students. With her teaching, she hopes to provide a positive, inclusive and safe learning environment to help students find and follow their strength and passions by constructively challenging and encouraging them to realize their full potential.
Career
Aktar obtained her bachelor's degree in Psychology at Bogazici University (Istanbul, Turkey) in 2008. She earned the Research Master of Science in Psychology at the University of Amsterdam in 2010 with a major specialization in clinical psychology and a minor specialization in psychonomics (cum laude). After that, she obtained her PhD at the Research Institute Child Development and Education at the University of Amsterdam in 2016. Her PhD research was about how being exposed to negative emotions from parents in everyday interactions in infancy can contribute to parent-to-child transmission of emotional disorders. Following her PhD, she continued to work as a post-doc researcher at the Developmental Psychopathology section in Amsterdam, where she extended her research on the learning of negative emotions from parents to childhood years. Since 2016, she followed up this line of work at Leiden University where she became a senior assistant professor in 2021. In the academic year 2017-2018, she was a visiting researcher at Cognition Affect and Temperament Lab of Professor Perez-Edgar at Pennsylvania State University.
Since 2019, she is also a teacher of Mindful Parenting and of Mindful with Your Baby trainings (certified by the International Centrum for Mindfulness in Amsterdam).
Grants and Awards
- 2018: NWO VENI Grant
- 2017: Leiden University Funds Research Grants
- 2017: NWO Rubicon Grant
- 2014: Best Article Prize Institute for the Study of Education and Human Development (ISED)/ NL
- 2010: Leiden University Spinoza Research Scholarships, Leiden University, Child and Family Studies
- 2008 – 2010: Amsterdam Merit Scholarships, University of Amsterdam, Psychology
Senior assistant professor
- Social & Behavioural Sciences
- Psychology
- Clinical Psychology
- Nimphy C.A. Elzinga B.M. Does A.J.W. van der, Bockstaele B. van & Pérez-Edgar K. Westenberg M Aktar E. (2024), “Nobody Here Likes Her”: the Impact of parental verbal threat information on children’s fear of strangers, Developmental Psychobiology 66: 1-10 (e22526).
- Nimphy C.A., Mitrou V., Elzinga B.M., Does A.J.W. van der & Aktar E. (2024), The role of parental verbal threat information in children’s fear acquisition: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 27: 714–731.
- Altar E. & Pérez-Edgar K. (2024), Family risk factors in the acquisition of anxiety: behavioral inhibition and social fear learning from parents, Advances in Psychiatry and Behavioral Health 4(1): 225-233.
- Aktar E., Venetikidi M., Bockstaele B. van, Giessen D. van der & Perez-Edgar K. (2024), Pupillary responses to dynamic negative versus positive facial expressions of emotion in children and parents: links to depression and anxiety, Developmental Psychobiology 66(6): 1-15 (e22522. ).
- Nimphy C.A., Venetikidi M., Elzinga B.M., Does A.J.W. van der & Aktar E. (2023), Parent to offspring fear transmission via modeling in early life: a systematic review and meta analysis, Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review : 751-772.
- Nimphy C.A., Elzinga B.M., Does A.J.W. van der & Aktar E. (2023), "Covid-19 is dangerous": the role of parental verbal threat information on children's fear of Covid-19, Journal of Adolescence 95(1): 147-156.
- Aktar E., Nimphy C.A., Kret M.E., Perez-Edgar K., Raijmakers M.E.J. & Bogels S.M. (2022), Attention biases to threat in infants and parents: links to parental and infant anxiety dispositions, Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology 50(3): 387-402 .
- Aktar E (2022), Intergenerational transmission of anxious information processing biases: an updated conceptual model, Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 25(1): 1-22.
- Aktar E., Nimphy C.A., van Bockstaele B. & Pérez-Edgar K. (2022), The social learning of threat and safety in the family: parent-to-child transmission of social fears via verbal information, Developmental Psychobiology 64(e22257): 1-20.
- Nimphy C.A., Elzinga B.M., Van der Does A.J.W. & Aktar E. (2022), “Covid‐19 is dangerous”: The role of parental verbal threat information on children's fear of Covid‐19, Journal of Adolescence 95(1): 147-156.
- Bockstaele B. van, Aktar E., Majdandzic M., Perez-Edgar K. & Bogels S.M. (2021), The relation between early behavioural inhibition and later social anxiety, independent of attentional biases to threat, Cognition and Emotion 35(7): 1431-1439.
- Aktar E., Nimphy C.A., Kret M.E., Perez-Edgar K., Bogels S.M. & Raijmakers M.E.J. (2021), Pupil responses to dynamic negative facial expressions of emotion in infants and parents, Developmental Psychobiology 63(7): e22190.
- Salvadori E.A., Colonnesi C., Vonk H.S., Oort F.J. & Aktar E. (2021), Infant emotional mimicry of strangers: associations with parent emotional mimicry, parent-infant mutual attention, and parent dispositional affective empathy, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18(2): 1-19 (654).
- Aktar E., Raijmakers M.E.J. & Kret M.E. (2020), Pupil mimicry in infants and parents, Cognition and Emotion 34(6): 1160-1170.
- Aktar E. & Peréz Edgar K. (2020), Infant Emotion Development and Temperament. In: Lockman J.J. & Tamis-LeMonda C.S. (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Infant Development: Brain, Behavior, and Cultural Context.: Cambridge University Press. 715-741.
- Aktar E., Qu J., Lawrence P.J., Tollenaar M.S., Elzinga B.M. & Bögels S.M. (2019), Fetal and Infant Outcomes in the Offspring of Parents With Perinatal Mental Disorders: Earliest Influences, Frontiers in Psychiatry 10: e391.
- Emerson L.M., Aktar E., De Bruijn E., Potharst E. & Bögels S. (2019), Mindful Parenting in Secondary Child Mental Health: Key Parenting Predictors of Treatment Effects, Mindfulness : 1-11.
- Zeegers M.A., Potharst E.S., Veringa-Skiba I.K., Aktar E., Goris M., Bögels S.M. & Colonnesi C. (2019), Evaluating Mindful with your baby/toddler: observational changes in maternal sensitivity, acceptance, mind-mindedness, and dyadic synchrony, Frontiers in Psychology (10): 1-14 (753).
- Aktar E., Van Bockstaele B., Pérez‐Edgar K., Wiers R.W. & Bögels S.M. (2019), Intergenerational transmission of attentional bias and anxiety, Developmental Science 22(3): e12772.
- Cong Y.Q., Junge C., Aktar E., Raijmakers M.E.J., Franklin A. & Sauter D. (2019), Pre-verbal infants perceive emotional facial expressions categorically, Cognition and Emotion 33(3): 391-403.
- Nikolić M., Aktar E., Bögels S., Colonnesi C. & De Vente W. (2018), Bumping heart and sweaty palms: Physiological hyperarousal as a risk factor for child social anxiety, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 59(2): 119-128.
- Aktar E., Majdandžić M., De Vente W. & Bögels S.M. (2018), Parental Expressions of Anxiety and Child Temperament in Toddlerhood Jointly Predict Preschoolers’ Avoidance of Novelty, Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology 47(sup 1): S421-S434.
- Aktar E., Mandell D.J., De Vente W., Majdandžić M., Oort F.J., Van Renswoude D.R., Raijmakers M.E.J. & Bögels S.M. (2018), Parental negative emotions are related to behavioral and pupillary correlates of infants’ attention to facial expressions of emotion, Infant Behavior & Development 53: 101-111.
- Aktar E., Colonnesi C., De Vente W., Majdandžić M. & Bögels S.M. (2017), How do parents' depression and anxiety, and infants' negative temperament relate to parent–infant face-to-face interactions?, Development and Psychopathology 29(3): 697-710.
- Potharst E.S., Aktar E., Rexwinkel M., Rigterink M. & Bögels S.M. (2017), Mindful with Your Baby: Feasibility, Acceptability, and Effects of a Mindful Parenting Group Training for Mothers and Their Babies in a Mental Health Context, Mindfulness 8(5): 1236-1250.
- Aktar E. & Bögels S.M. (2017), Exposure to Parents’ Negative Emotions as a Developmental Pathway to the Family Aggregation of Depression and Anxiety in the First Year of Life, Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 20(4): 369-390.
- Aktar E., Nikolić M. & Bögels S.M. (2017), Environmental transmission of generalized anxiety disorder from parents to children: worries, experiential avoidance, and intolerance of uncertainty, Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 19(2): 137-147.
- Aktar E. (2017), Antenne baby slaat aan op stress, Vakblad Vroeg 4: 23-25.
- Aktar E., Mandell D.J., De Vente W., Majdandžić M., Raijmakers M.E.J. & Bögels S.M. (2016), Infants’ temperament and mothers’, and fathers’ depression predict infants’ attention to objects paired with emotional faces, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 44(5): 975-990.
- Aktar E., Majdandžić M., De Vente W. & Bögels S.M. (2014), Parental social anxiety disorder prospectively predicts toddlers' fear/avoidance in a social referencing paradigm, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 55(1): 77-87.
- Aktar E., Majdandžić M., Vente W. de & Bögels S.M. (2013), The interplay between expressed parental anxiety and infant behavioural inhibition predicts infant avoidance in a social referencing paradigm, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 54(2): 144-156.
- Majdandžić M., Vente W. de, Feinberg M.E., Aktar E. & Bögels S.M. (2012), Bidirectional Associations Between Coparenting Relations and Family Member Anxiety: A Review and Conceptual Model, Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 15(1): 28-42.