Richard Gonzalez

University of Michigan | U-M · Department of Psychology

Objectives Guided by a life course perspective and fundamental cause theory, this study aims to visualize co-trajectories of health between partners and examine how changes in one spouse’s cognitive status can cohesively impact the health of the other spouse along three dimensions (functional, mental, and cognitive). Methods Drawing longitudinal d...

We sought to determine whether the biomarkers of chronic inflammation predict cognitive decline in a prospective observational study. We measured baseline serum soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR) and high sensitivity C‐reactive protein (hs‐CRP) levels in 282 participants of the University of Michigan Memory and Aging Project....

Traditional life course studies often focus on how one predictor influences one health outcome that may not be able to capture the interdependence of two or more health trajectories very well. Objectives: (1) demonstrate an innovative method to create a 3-dimensional health profile cube that presents physical, mental, and cognitive health and the c...

Background In 2020, many family members were thrust into the role of caregiving for a relative with COVID-19 with little preparation, training, or understanding of the disease and its symptoms. Objectives To explore the barriers to and facilitators of caregiving experienced by family caregivers of patients with COVID-19 who had been in intensive c...

There are innumerable design methods that exist across a wide spectrum of disciplines, ranging from engineering, to marketing, to psychology. However, the organic, multidisciplinary nature of methodological development in design leads to challenges in comparing or combining methods. Disciplinary perspectives can create conceptual 'boundaries' that...

Objectives: Daily stress and cardiovascular reactivity may be important mechanisms linking cumulative life event stress with cardiovascular health and may help to explain racial health disparities. However, studies have yet to examine links between exposure to life events stress, daily stress exposure, and cardiovascular reactivity. This study ass...

Negative relationships (i.e., irritating, demanding) predict poor well-being and daily processes may account for these links. This study examined longitudinal trajectories of negative ties and their links with daily social interactions and well-being. A total of 169 individuals ages 33 to 91 reported negative relationship quality (spouse/child/frie...

The coronavirus pandemic has led to an exceptional number of critical care hospitalizations followed by extended recovery periods that necessitate familial support. Using a qualitative descriptive approach, this study aimed to examine the strategies used by families to adjust to the caregiving role. Semi-structured interviews of patients who had be...

Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, a leading cause of disability among older adults, has become a critical public health concern. The clock-drawing test (CDT), which asks subjects to draw a clock, typically with hands showing 11:10, has been widely used as a screening tool to detect dementia in clinical research and surveys. The clock-drawi...

Aim and objective: To identify how family caregivers adapt to the caregiving role following a relative's COVID-19-related intensive care unit (ICU) hospitalisation. Background: Family caregiving is often associated with poor health amongst caregivers which may limit their capacity to effectively support patients. Though severe COVID-19 infection...

Background Behavioral science researchers are increasingly collecting detailed location data such as second-by-second GPS tracking on participants due to increased ease and affordability. While intraindividual variability has been discussed in the travel literature for decades, traditional methods designed for studying individual differences in cen...

Original and cumulative prospect theory differ in the composition rule used to combine the probability weighting function and the value function. We test these composition rules by performing a novel test. We apply estimates of prospect theory's weighting and value function obtained from two-outcome cash equivalents, a domain where original and cum...

Emotion understanding develops rapidly in early childhood. Firstborn children (N = 231, 55% girls/45% boys, 86% White, 5% Black, 3% Asian, 4% Latinx, Mage = 29.92 months) were recruited into a longitudinal study from 2004 to 2008 in the United States and administered a series of tasks assessing eight components of young children's emotion understan...

Recent immigrant and undocumented Hispanic/Latino adults in the United States (U.S.) are an underserved segment of the aging population. In this cross-sectional pilot study, we examined associations between self-reported stressors metabolic syndrome, emotional reactivity, and cognitive functioning in a heterogenous sample (N=80) of Hispanic/Latino...

Relationship research has suggested that health among spouses is interdependent and should be considered jointly. Using data from the 2008/2010 and 2016/2018 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (3858 qualified couples; age=67.0±9.6), we investigated the joint influence of married partners’ individual and shared cumulative biological risk on fu...

The COVID-19 pandemic posed new challenges for caregivers. This study examines the prevalence of pandemic care challenges (e.g., decreasing care to reduce virus spread, difficulty accessing medical care) and their associations with caregiver mental health and interpersonal well-being in a nationally representative sample of 311 caregivers who parti...

We developed comprehensive multi-domain profiles of psychosocial stress in urban-dwelling, racially and ethnically diverse adults (age range: 25-65; N=256; 63% Non-Hispanic Black; 25% Hispanic; 9% Non-Hispanic White) and evaluated associations with cognitive function. Participants completed psychosocial stress measures tapping into ten domains and...

Changes in children’s attachment security to mother and father were examined for 230 firstborn children ( M = 31.17 months), their mothers and fathers participating in a longitudinal investigation starting in the last trimester of the mothers’ pregnancy and 1, 4, 8, and 12 months after the birth of an infant sibling. Both parents completed the Atta...

Subjective assessment of footwear experience during running is critical for recommendation and design. Recently, ride perception was quantified using an eight-dimension ratings scale. Ride varied by shoe and individual for treadmill running. However, it is unknown whether ride perception is a reliable measure in circumstances other than treadmill r...

Social comparison literature has long established that drawing comparisons facilitates competitive motivation. Yet, the literature has neglected how the actor may simultaneously become the target of comparison, which can likewise increase competitive motivation. Therefore, competitive motivation increases not only because coacting competitors draw...

Background and objectives: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses new challenges for caregivers of adults with chronic or disabling conditions. This study uses nationally representative data to examine the prevalence of pandemic care challenges and supports and their associations with caregiver mental health and interpersonal well-...

This is the fifth in a series of white papers providing a summary of the discussions and future directions that are derived from these topical meetings. This paper focuses on issues related to analysis and visual analytics. While these two topics are distinct, there are clear overlaps between the two. It is common to use different visualizations du...

Elite middle distance runners present as a unique population in which to explore biomechanical phenomena in relation to running speed, as their training and racing spans a broad spectrum of paces. However, there have been no comprehensive investigations of running mechanics across speeds within this population. Here, we used the spring-mass model o...

Self-regulation, known as the ability to harness cognitive, emotional, and motivational resources to achieve goals, is hypothesized to contribute to health behaviors across the lifespan. Enhancing self-regulation early in life may increase positive health outcomes. During pre-adolescence, children assume increased autonomy in health behaviors (e.g....

Runners are commonly modeled as spring-mass systems, but the traditional calculations of these models rely on discrete observations during the gait cycle (e.g., maximal vertical force) and simplifying assumptions (e.g., leg length), challenging the predicative capacity and generalizability of observations. We present a method to model runners as sp...

The birth of an infant sibling is a normative life event for most young children and their parents. Prior research has indicated that coparenting the first child during the pregnancy with the second predicts the firstborn’s behavioral adjustment after the birth of their infant sibling. Using a latent dyad model (LDM), we tested the dyadic (variance...

Father‐infant and mother‐infant (one‐year‐olds) adrenocortical attunement was explored during the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) among 125 father‐infant and 141 mother‐infant dyads. Cortisol was assessed at baseline (T1), 20 (T2), and 40 minutes (T3) after the first parent‐infant separation. Initial correlations indicated significant association...

Caregiving for post-intensive care COVID-19 patients is an important determinant of successful recovery, including the reduced likelihood of ICU readmission. With possible ICU readmissions coinciding with a second wave of the pandemic, researchers and clinicians at the University of Michigan sought to develop a patient and caregiver-informed interv...

Family caregivers are essential care providers helping to ensure the sometimes complicated recovery of recently hospitalized COVID-19 patients. COVID-19 caregivers face pandemic-specific challenges such as not being at patient bedside throughout the hospital stay and managing social distancing post-discharge. The current study aims to explore the u...

Cross-sectional analyses of internet use patterns among older adults find that the rate of internet use is less with greater physical and memory difficulties. It is not clear, however, how age-cohorts differ in their internet use as physical and memory difficulties increase over time. In addition to factors such as increasing accessibility (cost) a...

Beliefs about aging are grounded in social experience. This study considered the extent to which married older adults' shared beliefs about aging and markers of aging maintain a concurrent and enduring association with their partners' beliefs about and markers of aging. Data from the 2010/2012 and 2014/2016 waves of the Health and Retirement Study...

Behavioral regulation is one of the key developmental skills children acquire during early childhood. Previous research has focused primarily on the role of parents as socializing agents in this process, yet it is likely that older siblings also are influential given the numerous daily interactions between siblings. This exploratory longitudinal st...

Footwear assessment is thought to be influenced by shoe comfort and the feeling of the ground-shoe interface during contact, sometimes called the ride of the shoe. Runners are often asked to rate the ride quality of smoothness as an indicator of comfort. However, previous work has shown that smoothness does not directly map to preference or comfort...

Background: Loneliness is common in dementia caregivers as cognitive impairment (CI) alters marital and social relationships. Unexplored is how an individual's loneliness is affected at earlier, more ambiguous, periods of their spouse's CI. Methods: Using the Health and Retirement Study, our study participants included 2,206 coupled individuals...

Social ties are essential for survival but the mechanisms accounting for this link are unclear. This study examined links between daily interpersonal experiences and cardiovascular reactivity. A total of 34 participants (aged 40 to 80) completed ecological momentary assessment surveys every three hours for 4 days and wore a device that assessed hea...

Drawing from the lens of architecture, designing a research study for a controlled, simulated environment requires the consideration of three primary types of interaction involving people and infrastructure. These three types include the interface between and among the respondent(s) and the researcher(s), the interface between and among the people...

Older adult populations are known for their diversity in health. Within couples, however, population studies have documented exceptional levels of spousal similarity in health and health behaviors. The presence of spousal similarity in health among older adults suggests a process of convergence, yet few studies have examined this phenomenon longitu...

We use self-reported and behavioral data from the HomeLab to comment on the theoretical and methodological implications of integrating objective and subjective measures of experience. To illustrate, we will focus on two domains that vary in the nature of objective and subjective measurements examined. One domain will be decision making where subjec...

Homelike research spaces provide a unique context for studying older adulthood by blurring the boundaries between the participant’s own home and traditional laboratories. Such intermediary spaces hold promise for developing measures of functional performance with increased ecological validity. While “home labs” are becoming more accessible at insti...

Waveform data resulting from time-intensive longitudinal designs require careful treatment. In particular, the statistical properties of summary metrics in this area are crucial. We draw on event-related potential (ERP) studies, a field with a relatively long history of collecting and analyzing such data, to illustrate our points. In particular, th...

We examined child and family risk factors that were associated with the development of individual differences in externalizing problems across the toddler years. Our central hypothesis was that toddlers with more aggressive and disruptive older siblings would be at elevated risk for heightened levels of externalizing behavior. We tested this hypoth...

Introduction: It has been hypothesized that people diagnosed with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) exhibit behavioral aberrations when faced with the potential for negative outcomes, but the specific cognitive aspects of decision-making that may be altered have not been systematically studied in clinical populations. Here, we studied...

Objectives: To provide valid estimates of the 12-month prevalence of passive suicidal ideation among older adults, without conditioning on depression status, using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Methods: Data come from the 2012 HRS (n = 17,434) and 2004/5 Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) Study (n = 755). In the HRS, passive s...

Systems engineering and design thinking have been widely seen as distinctly different processes, systems engineering being more data-driven and analytical, and design thinking being more human- centred and creative. We use the term ‘design thinking’ to encompass the plurality of human-centered design processes that seek to unpack the core values be...

Fathers are more than social accidents. Research has demonstrated that fathers matter to children's development. Despite noted progress, challenges remain on how best to conceptualize and assess fathering and father–child relationships. The current monograph is the result of an SRCD‐sponsored meeting of fatherhood scholars brought together to discu...

The current study explored whether fathers and mothers from 195 two-parent U.S. families engaged in a form of activation parenting (i.e., sensitivity, cognitive stimulation, and moderate intrusiveness) with their secondborn, 12-month-old infants during a 15-min challenging teaching task, and to determine if this type of interaction was more common...

Numerous studies have shown the value of introducing cognitive supports to encourage the development of creative ability, and researchers have developed a variety of methods to aid in generating ideas. However, design students often struggle to explore more ideas after their initial ideas are exhausted. In this study, an empirically validated tool...

The current study explored whether fathers and mothers from 195 two-parent U.S. families engaged in a form of activation parenting (i.e., sensitivity, cognitive stimulation, and moderate intrusiveness) with their secondborn, 12-month-old infants during a 15-min challenging teaching task, and to determine if this type of interaction was more common...

In this paper, we propose a stepwise forward selection algorithm for detecting the effects of a set of correlated exposures and their interactions on a health outcome of interest when the underlying relationship could potentially be nonlinear. Though the proposed method is very general, our application in this paper remains to be on analysis of mul...

Psychologists and other behavioral scientists are frequently interested in whether a questionnaire measures a latent construct. Attempts to address this issue are referred to as construct validation. We describe and extend nonparametric hypothesis testing procedures to assess matrix structures, which can be used for construct validation. These meth...

The current study examined trajectories of maternal and paternal depression in the year following the birth of an infant sibling, and relations with family risk factors and firstborn children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Latent class growth analysis was conducted on 231 families in a longitudinal investigation (prebirth and...

The cost of adaptation to experiences across the life course is reflected in multisystem markers of biologic strain. Processes of adaptation, however, do not occur in isolation, but rather in the company of close social partners. This study integrates data on self-reported, physical, and biological measures of health and life experiences from the 2...

Physiological measures have been traditionally employed in gerontological research to study changes in health and functional abilities associated with aging. More recently, these measures have also been used in behavioral and social research to study decision making and user experience. Selection of appropriate sensors to record a pertinent physiol...

Analyses of internet use patterns among older adults using cross-sectional data have found that the rate of internet use is less with age. It is not clear, however, if older adults reduced internet use as they aged or they never used internet to begin with. Factors that affect technology adoption such as accessibility (cost and complexity of use) a...

Lifespace is typically measured using a self-report questionnaire covering general areas visited over the past 4 weeks (Peel et al., 2005). However, this standard measure does not align with questions about how lifespace ebbs and flows in concert with daily experiences. Thus, methods to quantify perturbations of lifespace at faster timescales are n...

Common measures of functional limitations in completing instrumental tasks often rely on self-reports, which complicates the assessment of how tools may assist or hinder task completion. In this study we examined differences in the alignment of older adults’ subjective and objective dimensions of effort while dishwashing using standard and assistiv...

Rationale: Sepsis is a leading cause of death and disability whose heterogeneity is often cited as a key impediment to translational progress. Objective: To test the hypothesis that there are consequential and significant differences in sepsis outcomes that result from differences in a patient's clinical course leading up to sepsis hospitalizati...

Researchers are concerned about whether manipulations have the intended effects. Many journals and reviewers view manipulation checks favorably, and they are widely reported in prestigious journals. However, the prototypical manipulation check is a verbal (rather than behavioral) measure that always appears at the same point in the procedure (rathe...

Researchers are concerned about whether manipulations have the intended effects. Many journals and reviewers view manipulation checks favorably, and they are widely reported in prestigious journals. However, the prototypical manipulation check is a verbal (rather than behavioral) measure that always appears at the same point in the procedure (rathe...

Fathers are a crucial source of support for children following the birth of an infant sibling. This study examined whether fathers were more vulnerable to the effects of interparental conflict than mothers, and whether there was a subsequent spillover cascade from interparental conflict to children's externalizing behavior problems. We followed 241...

Research transparency, reproducibility, and data sharing uphold core principles of science at a time when the integrity of scientific research is being questioned. This article discusses how research data in psychology can be made accessible for reproducibility and reanalysis by describing practical ways to overcome barriers to data sharing. We exa...

Introduction Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) patients show abnormalities in decision-making and, clinically, appear to show heightened sensitivity to potential negative outcomes. Despite the importance of these cognitive processes in OCD, few studies have examined the disorder within an economic decision-making framework. Here, we investigated...

Personal growth is usually considered an outcome of intrapersonal processes—personal resources residing within the person. Comparatively, little research has examined the interpersonal processes underlying personal growth. We investigated how one interpersonal factor—people’s relationships with others—influences personal growth. Study 1 showed that...

We propose to change the default P-value threshold for statistical significance for claims of new discoveries from 0.05 to 0.005.

The birth of an infant sibling is a common occurrence in the lives of many toddler and preschool children. Early childhood is also a time for the emergence of disruptive behavior problems that may set the stage for later problem behaviors. The current study examined individual differences in young children’s behavioral and emotional adjustment afte...

The birth of an infant sibling is a common occurrence in the lives of many toddler and preschool children. Early childhood is also a time for the emergence of disruptive behavior problems that may set the stage for later problem behaviors. The current study examined individual differences in young children’s behavioral and emotional adjustment afte...

The birth of an infant sibling is a common occurrence in the lives of many toddler and preschool children. Early childhood is also a time for the emergence of disruptive behavior problems that may set the stage for later problem behaviors. The current study examined individual differences in young children’s behavioral and emotional adjustment afte...

The birth of an infant sibling is a common occurrence in the lives of many toddler and preschool children. Early childhood is also a time for the emergence of disruptive behavior problems that may set the stage for later problem behaviors. The current study examined individual differences in young children’s behavioral and emotional adjustment afte...

The birth of an infant sibling is a common occurrence in the lives of many toddler and preschool children. Early childhood is also a time for the emergence of disruptive behavior problems that may set the stage for later problem behaviors. The current study examined individual differences in young children’s behavioral and emotional adjustment afte...

The birth of an infant sibling is a common occurrence in the lives of many toddler and preschool children. Early childhood is also a time for the emergence of disruptive behavior problems that may set the stage for later problem behaviors. The current study examined individual differences in young children’s behavioral and emotional adjustment afte...

The birth of an infant sibling is a common occurrence in the lives of many toddler and preschool children. Early childhood is also a time for the emergence of disruptive behavior problems that may set the stage for later problem behaviors. The current study examined individual differences in young children’s behavioral and emotional adjustment afte...

The birth of an infant sibling is a common occurrence in the lives of many toddler and preschool children. Early childhood is also a time for the emergence of disruptive behavior problems that may set the stage for later problem behaviors. The current study examined individual differences in young children’s behavioral and emotional adjustment afte...

The birth of an infant sibling is a common occurrence in the lives of many toddler and preschool children. Early childhood is also a time for the emergence of disruptive behavior problems that may set the stage for later problem behaviors. The current study examined individual differences in young children’s behavioral and emotional adjustment afte...

Poor self-regulation (i.e., inability to harness cognitive, emotional, motivational resources to achieve goals) is hypothesized to contribute to unhealthy behaviors across the lifespan. Enhancing early self-regulation may increase positive health outcomes. Obesity is a major public health concern with early-emerging precursors related to self-regul...

Design thinking (DT) and engineering systems thinking (EST) are two complementary approaches to understanding cognition, organization, and other non-technical factors that influence the design and performance of engineering systems. Until relatively recently, these two concepts have been explored in isolation from one another; design thinking metho...

Aesthetic appeal is a primary driver of customer consideration for products such as automobiles. Product designers must accordingly convey design attributes (e.g., 'Sportiness'), a challenging proposition given the subjective nature of aesthetics and heterogeneous market segments with potentially different aesthetic preferences. We introduce a scal...

Purpose of the Study Individual beliefs are known to be predictive of health. This study examines the co-construction of couple norms and links couples’ shared beliefs about aging to future individuals’ and couples’ functional limitations. Design and Methods Data from the 2008 and 2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (1,231 couples; age r...

"We propose to change the default P-value threshold forstatistical significance for claims of new discoveries from 0.05 to 0.005."

Objective: Communication during racially-discordant interactions is often of poor quality and may contribute to racial treatment disparities. We evaluated an intervention designed to increase patient active participation and other communication-related outcomes during interactions between Black patients and non-Black oncologists. Methods: Partic...

Crowdsourcing offers the opportunity to gather evaluations on concept designs from evaluators that otherwise may not have been considered, thus leveraging additional expertise to improve decision making during early stages of the design process. Previous research has shown that crowdsourcing may fail to evaluate correctly even ‘simple’ engineering...

This study examined changes in coparenting after the birth of a second child. Mothers and fathers from 241 2-parent families reported on their spouses' coparenting cooperation and conflict with their firstborn children before (prenatal) and 4 months after the birth of a second child. Parents completed prenatal questionnaires on their gender-role at...

A major task for parents during the transition to second-time parenthood is to help their firstborn adjust to their new roles as siblings. Increased father involvement has been theorized to be protective for firstborn adjustment. Fathers, however, are under increasing pressure to balance both work and family responsibilities. Here we evaluate fathe...

Objective: We conceptualize successful aging as a cumulative index of individual resources (the absence of disease and disability, high cognitive and physical functioning, social embeddedness) in the service of successful aging outcomes (global well-being, experienced well-being, and vital status), and conditioned by age, social structure, and envi...

Product forms in quantitative design methods are typically expressed with a mathematical representation such as vectors, trees, graphs, and grammars. Such formal representations are restrictive in terms of realism or flexibility, and this limits their utility for human designers who typically create product forms in a design space that is restricte...

Objectives The associations of personality with activity participation and well-being have been well studied. However, less is known concerning the relationship between personality and specific aspects of activity engagement in older adults. We conducted a fine-grained examination of the effects of extraversion and conscientiousness on reported act...

Concept generation techniques can help to support designers in generating multiple ideas during design tasks. However, differences in the ways these techniques guide idea generation are not well understood. This study investigated the qualities of concepts generated by beginning engineering designers using one of three different idea generation tec...

Quantitative preference models are used to predict customer choices among design alternatives by collecting prior purchase data or survey answers. This paper examines how to improve the prediction accuracy of such models without collecting more data or changing the model. We propose to use features as an intermediary between the original customer-l...

Purpose: Health providers' implicit racial bias negatively affects communication and patient reactions to many medical interactions. However, its effects on racially discordant oncology interactions are largely unknown. Thus, we examined whether oncologist implicit racial bias has similar effects in oncology interactions. We further investigated w...

How do product designers create multiple concepts to consider? To address this question, we combine evidence from four empirical studies of design process and outcomes, including award-winning products, multiple concepts for a project by an experienced industrial designer, and concept sets from 48 industrial and engineering designers for a single d...

When engaged in design activity, what does a designer think about? And how does she draw on disciplinary knowledge, precedent, and other strategies in her design process in order to imagine new possible futures? In this paper, we explore Design Heuristics as a form of intermediate-level knowledge that may explain how designers build on existing kno...

Individuals with hoarding disorder (HD) excessively acquire and retain goods while also exhibiting characteristics of impulsivity and addiction. However, HD individuals do not always perform impulsively in experiments, they do not appear interested in money, and they exhibit many features of risk-aversion and future-planning. To examine impulsivity...

Current design theory lacks a systematic method to identify what designers know that helps them to create innovative products. In the early stages of idea generation, designers may find novel ideas come readily to mind, or may become fixated on their own or existing products. This may limit the ability to consider more and more varied candidate con...

Designers faced with the task of developing a new product model of a brand must balance several considerations. The design must be novel and express attributes important to the customers, while also recognizable as a representative of the brand. This balancing is left to the intuition of the designers, who must anticipate how customers will perceiv...

The experimental laboratory has become a key component in social and economic research. The article discusses how to prioritize the equipment and personnel needed to create a fully operational laboratory to answer research questions.

Research supports the central role cognitive strategies can play in successful concept generation by individual designers. Design heuristics have been shown to facilitate the creation of new design concepts in the early, conceptual stage of the design process, as well as throughout the development of ideas. However, we know relatively little about...