Simone Dobbelaar works as postdoctoral researcher at the Developmental and Educational Psychology Unit of Leiden University's Institute of Psychology. Her research focuses on the role of social experiences in children's and adolescents' behavioural and neural development.

More information about Simone Dobbelaar

Simone Dobbelaar works as postdoctoral researcher at the Developmental and Educational Psychology Unit of Leiden University's Institute of Psychology. Her research focuses on the role of social experiences in children's and adolescents' behavioural and neural development.

Research

Simone Dobbelaar's research focuses on the the role of peers and social experiences in children’s and adolescents’ behavioral and neural development, with a specific focus on behaviors such as aggression regulation, prosocial behavior and reward processing. In addition, she aims to understand the role of the social environment on mental health outcomes. Simone studies development both on a behavioral and neural level, across different contexts and using different types of scientific methods (e.g., experimental tasks, fMRI, questionnaires, sociometrics).

Short CV

Simone Dobbelaar has a background in Psychobiology and Psychology, and obtained her Research Master Psychology at the University of Amsterdam with a specialization in Brain and Cognition and Clinical Psychology (cum laude). In 2023, she completed her PhD on the behavioral and neural development of social competence from childhood to adolescence at the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology. Her PhD project was part of the Leiden Consortium on Individual Development (L-CID) and supervised by Prof. dr. Eveline Crone, Dr. Anna van Duijvenvoorde and Dr. Michelle Achterberg. 

Simone currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Growing Up Together in Society (GUTS) project, where she studies the effects of peer relations on social and cognitive development in the transition from late adolescence to early adulthood.

Teaching

• Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology
  Perspective on Career Planning
  Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
  Master's thesis

Publications