Tara McAuley

BSc (University of Toronto), PhD (Washington University)

Contact information

Child and Adolescent Neuropsychology Lab website

Research interests

My research interests pertain to the development of executive control - a set of inter-related skills that facilitate purposeful, goal-oriented behaviour. My goal as a clinician scientist is to cultivate a programme of research in which the promotion of these skills is an overarching theme. Specific foci include: (1) modelling executive control across development, with a particular focus on transitional periods that occur in early childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, (2) identifying factors that influence the development of executive control, including neurobiological risk, psychosocial adversity, and social-cultural context, (3) further elucidating the relationship between executive control and other domains of function, including academic achievement, emotional adjustment, and peer relations, and (4) developing interventions that strengthen core executive skills. My research examines these questions in the context of typical and atypical development using converging behavioural and neuroimaging methods.

Selected publications

• McAuley, T., Crosbie, J., Charach, A., & Schachar, R. (2017). Clinical, sociobiological, and cognitive predictors of ADHD persistence in children followed prospectively over time. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 45(4), 765-776.
• McAuley, T., Crosbie, J., Charach, A., & Schachar, R. (2014). The persistence of cognitive deficits in remitted and unremitted ADHD: a case for the state-independence of response inhibition.  Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 55(3), 292-300.
• McAuley, T., & White, D. A. (2011). A latent variables examination of processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory during typical development. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 108, 453-468.
• McAuley, T., Chen, S., Goos, L., Schachar, R, & Crosbie, J. (2010). Is the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function more strongly associated with measures of impairment or executive function? Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 16, 495-505.
• McAuley, T., Brahmbhatt, S., & Barch, D. (2007). Performance on an episodic encoding task yields further insight into functional brain development. NeuroImage, 34(2), 815-826.