Delay Discounting as a Transdisease Process in Health Behavior

Dr. Fields' current research focuses on behavioral decision-making (with an emphasis on impulsivity) as a trans-disease process in health risk behaviors. Her research draws attention to self-regulatory and self-control pathways to behavior, modeling both their causes and consequences in order to better inform intervention efforts. Specifically, she is interested in how behavioral decision-making and other family, process and psychosocial factors interact to affect prevention and treatment outcomes for health behaviors. Her primary research examines factors related to the initiation and maintenance of addictive behaviors (specifically in children and adolescents). Her secondary research line extends the knowledge gained from addiction research to eating behavior, obesity, and subsequent diabetes risk. In both areas of research, she is also studying the neural mechanisms that underlie performance on laboratory behavioral tasks modeling impulsive behaviors in order to better inform prevention and treatment interventions.