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B.A., University of California, Berkeley, 2007
Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2015

Curriculum Vitae [PDF]

Name Pronunciation Guide:
"lwees [one syllable] or lew-ees [two syllables; easier anglicized version] FLOH – rehss [the Spanish “r” almost sounds like the English “d”; “ehss” sounds like the end of “dress”] "

Click below to hear pronunciation

Please note: I will not be admitting a new graduate student for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Research Interests

The central theme of my research is how close relationships and interpersonal functioning confer protection or risk in the development and clinical course of depression. Although interpersonal relationships are considered both a protective and risk factor for psychopathology, including depression, the mechanisms are not yet sufficiently understood. To better understand these mechanisms, my work has focused on the following three interrelated lines of clinical and basic research using experimental and naturalistic methods (e.g., fMRI, ecological momentary assessment): (1) the role of interpersonal factors in depression; (2) the cognitive-affective benefits of the social regulation of emotion; and (3) the roles of social and reward neural circuitries in rewarding and supportive social experiences. Further, I have primarily focused on examining these three lines of research in adolescence and young adulthood, as they are periods involving high depression risk, high sensitivity to social stimuli, and continued social and affective development.

Selected Publications

Flores, Jr., L.E., Eckstrand, K.L., Silk, J.S., Allen, N.B., Ambrosia, M., Healey, K.L., & Forbes, E.E. (in press). Adolescents’ neural response to social reward and real-world emotional closeness and positive affect. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience.

Flores, Jr., L.E., Cyranowski, J.M., Amole, M., & Swartz, H.A. (2017). Prospective assessment of social network quality among depressed mothers treated with brief psychotherapy: Validation of the Social Network Quality (SNQ) scales. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 78, 98-106.

Flores, Jr., L. E., & Berenbaum, H. (2017). The social regulation of emotion and updating negative contents of working memory. Emotion, 17(4), 577-588.

Flores, Jr., L.E., & Berenbaum, H. (2017). The effect of the social regulation of emotion on emotional long-term memory. Emotion, 17(3), 547-556.

Flores, Jr., L.E., & Berenbaum, H. (2014). Desired emotional closeness moderates the prospective relations between levels of perceived emotional closeness and psychological distress. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 33(8), 673-700.

Flores, Jr., L. E., & Berenbaum, H. (2012). Desire for emotional closeness moderates the effectiveness of the social regulation of emotion. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(8), 952-957.