As a researcher and developmental psychologist, she has studied varying age groups across the life span, in part to attain a basic understanding of human development and in other part, to examine intervention effects.
Dr. Hernandez-Reif has conducted research on maternal depression, infant and child word-object learning, and more recently early childhood education and school readiness. Her lab is conducting a longitudinal study examining indicators in early infancy that predict to school readiness at 5-years of age, including examining cortisol stress hormone levels changes across early childhood.