Margaret Boyer, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Counseling, Clinical and School Psychology at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, has been awarded the 2019 Charles J. Gelso, Ph.D., Psychotherapy Research Grant. Her research proposal, entitled Measuring Vagal Tone in Psychotherapy: A Feasibility Study, emerged as one of the top three proposals and will be funded. The Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy will present Boyer with the award at the American Psychological Association (APA) Convention in Chicago in August.
The goal of Boyer’s project is to establish a strategy for efficiently and effectively measuring clients’ vagal tone as a meaningful predictor and indicator of psychotherapeutic change. It is hoped that this research can bridge disciplines of positive psychology and affective neuroscience by using a novel methodology to study vagal tone as both outcome and facilitator of psychological growth.
Vagal tone refers to activity of the vagus nerve, the 10th cranial nerve and a fundamental component of the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. This branch of the nervous system is not under conscious control and is largely responsible for the regulation of several body compartments at rest.
Margaret Boyer, M.A., is a doctoral candidate in Counseling Psychology at UCSB. Prior to her graduate studies, she received her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Economics from Haverford College and managed the Emotion and Self-Control lab at the University of Michigan. Her current research pursuits explore the integration of positive psychology in psychotherapy, interpersonal processes in emotion regulation, and therapeutic processes in psychological assessment. She currently serves as student supervisor of the Psychological Assessment Center at UCSB and provides individual and group therapy in local university and college counseling settings.