Primary Research Focus
Dr. Schaefer’s lab seeks to understand the processes contributing to eating disorder onset, maintenance, and remission. Most recently, this lab has focused on clarifying the affective, reward-based, and cognitive factors that may precipitate and maintain eating disorder behaviors. However, Dr. Schaefer’s lab also commonly evaluates sociocultural and environmental factors (e.g., appearance pressures, exposure to food cues) that may contribute to body image disturbance and eating disorder risk.
Dr. Schaefer’s research frequently incorporates both naturalistic (e.g., ecological momentary assessment) and laboratory-based methods (e.g., behavioral tasks, electroencephalography) to provide a comprehensive assessment of the relationships under investigation. In addition, Dr. Schaefer maintains a line of research that seeks to evaluate and improve self-report measures of eating disorder risk.