Julia Passini

Education: B.A. in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, undergraduate training in the Developmental Social Neuroscience Lab primarily focused on social relationships in adolescence and neural pathways of stress, doctoral candidate at North Carolina State University

Research interests: adolescence, emerging adulthood, and identity formation

Latest projects: observing the role of social support as a moderator in the relationship between pandemic-related stress and identity distress within emerging adulthood

Additional Information: I work as a teaching assistant for graduate-level statistics courses including Multivariate Statistics and Multi-Level Modeling. Once completing my Ph.D. in Lifespan Development Psychology, I aspire to work in user experience research and data analytics. Finally, some of my research was done under my maiden name of Sorensen.

Recent Publications:
Passini, J. S., & Baker-Ward, L. (2022) Who am I Now? Predictors of Identity Distress in Emerging Adults Amidst COVID-19. (under review)

Neupert, S. D., Growney, C. M., Zhu, X., Sorensen, J. K., Smith, E. L., & Hannig, J. (2021). BFF: Bayesian, fiducial, and frequentist analysis of cognitively impaired older adults. Entropy.

Recent Conferences:
Neupert, S., D., Zhu, X., Growney, C. M., Sorensen, J. K., Smith, E. L. (2022). Increases in Physical Activity Predicts Motivation for Cognitive Engagement in Impaired Older Adults. Poster session presented at American Psychological Association.

Sorensen, J., Patel, N., & Baker-Ward, L. (2021). Who am I Now? Identity Distress in Emerging Adults Amidst COVID-19. Poster session virtually presented at the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood.

Growney, C., Zhu, X., Sorensen, J., Smith, E, & Neupert, S. (2020). Severity of Cognitive Impairment Moderates the Effect of Depression on Motivation. Abstract presented virtually at Gerontological Society of America.

Sorensen, J. K., Lothary, A., Zhu, X., Smith, E.L., Growney, C., & Neupert, S.D. (2020). Self-perceived success on cognitive tasks within impaired older adults. Poster session virtually presented at the American Psychological Association Conference.

Growney, C. M., Sorensen, J. K., Smith, E. L., Zhu, X., Neupert, S. D. (2020). Predictors of costs associated with cognitive engagement in a cognitively impaired sample of older adults. Poster accepted at Cognitive Aging Conference (canceled due to COVID-19).

Zhu, X., Growney, C. M., Sorensen, J. K., Smith, E. L., Neupert, S. D. (2020). Play hard, think hard: Within-person engagement in daily activities predicts cognitive motivation in cognitively impaired older adults. Poster presented at the Cognitive Aging Conference, Atlanta, GA.

Sorensen, J. K., Kim, E., Baker-Ward, L. (2019) Get with the Times: Influences on Young Adults’ Dating of Societal Events. Poster session presented at Cognitive Development Society conference, Louisville, KY.

Contact Information:jksorens@ncsu.edu