Developmental Research Psychologist
Dr Sarah L. Howe
PhD, BPsySc (Hons)
Developmental research psychologist, engaged independently by the Digital Readiness Lab since February 2026.
Researching children's emotional development since 2015.
··Approved by Dr Howe
Professional background
About Dr Sarah L. Howe
- Children's emotion regulation
- Emotion socialisation
- Parenting, autonomy and control
- Person-centred and longitudinal methods
- Parent-report measures
Dr Sarah L. Howe's expertise is in how to answer a research question, choosing the design, the method and the measure that can carry it. Her published work runs from children's emotional development and parenting through to cognitive and clinical neuroscience, across a range of methodologies.
She is not an expert in screen time, digital media or digital readiness. Those are the Lab's subject, not hers. She is a research psychologist, not a clinician: she works on how studies are designed and what the data shows, rather than with individual children.
Core responsibility
Dr Sarah L. Howe designed the Australian Digital Readiness Index, analyses its data, and signs off every figure The Lab publishes.
Dr Howe is engaged independently. She is not employed by The Lab and holds no stake in it or in LiVELY. Her role is confined to the research: designing the Digital Readiness Index, and future research, analysing the data and signing off every figure The Lab publishes from it. She takes no part in the Lab's commercial decisions, and every figure is published with the method behind it, so the number can be checked against how it was produced.
Academic record
Selected publications
Howe, S. L., & Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J. (2022). Person-centered maternal emotion socialization and child temperament: Relations to children's emotion regulation and anxiety and depressive symptoms. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 31(9), 2644–2659.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-022-02289-yHowe, S. L., & Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J. (2023). Maternal socialization profiles, child gender, and later child regulation and internalizing symptoms. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 86, 101521.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2023.101521Under review
Howe, S. L., Ryan, K. M., Van Petegem, S., Zimmermann, G., Soenens, B., & Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J. Anxious, overprotective and helicopter parenting at the cusp of emerging adulthood: Prospective change and variation by family income and university student status.
Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J., Ryan, K. M., Hawes, T., & Howe, S. L. Parenting and autonomy at the emerging adult transition: Bidirectional associations of overparenting with decision-making and coping efficacy.
Earlier work — Clinical and cognitive neuroscience (published under her former name, Sarah L. Eagles)
Eagles, S., & Murphy, K. (2016). Inverted, upright, and blurred faces are not immune to the attentional blink. Perception, 45(8), 893–909.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006616643665Williams, L. M., Korgaonkar, M. S., Song, Y. C., Paton, R., Eagles, S., Goldstein-Piekarski, A., Grieve, S. M., Harris, A. W. F., Usherwood, T., & Etkin, A. (2015). Amygdala reactivity to emotional faces in the prediction of general and medication-specific responses to antidepressant treatment in the randomized iSPOT-D trial. Neuropsychopharmacology, 40(10), 2398–2408.
https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2015.89Song, Y. J. C., Korgaonkar, M. S., Armstrong, L. V., Eagles, S., Williams, L. M., & Grieve, S. M. (2014). Tractography of the brainstem in major depressive disorder using diffusion tensor imaging. PLOS ONE, 9(1), e84825.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0084825Full publication record: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3620-1173
Research
Digital Readiness Lab research designed or reviewed by Dr Sarah L. Howe
The Australian Digital Readiness Index 2026
Commissioned by the Digital Readiness Lab. Designed and analysed by Dr Sarah L. Howe. Every published figure signed off.
The Christmas Device Study
Commissioned by LiVELY from the Digital Readiness Lab. Method reviewed and figures signed off by Dr Sarah L. Howe.