ABOUT

Kayla is a current doctoral student in Sam Houston State University’s Clinical Psychology program. She received her Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology and Sociology: Criminal Justice from Reinhardt University in Canton, GA, and received her Masters of Art in Clinical Psychology from Sam Houston State University. When she is not in class or working on research, she loves to travel, play video games, and exercise.

 

RESEARCH INTERESTS 

Kayla is primarily interested in researching what factors influence the recognition and prevention of child sexual abuse. Specifically, she is interested in individuals’ ability to accurately detect grooming behaviors and how to educate people on how to prevent child sexual abuse. She is also interested in how to provide best practices in trauma-informed care to children who have experienced abuse.

 

CURRENT RESEARCH

To what extent can individuals accurately recognize grooming behaviors and prevent child sexual abuse? The very minimal literature on the detection of grooming behaviors has grim findings that individuals have difficulty recognizing grooming behaviors, and thus preventing abuse before it occurs. Kayla is interested in identifying what influences individuals’ lack of recognition of these behaviors and is currently focused on looking at sex and sexuality differences between the adult offender and child as a contributing factor.