Dr. Gerdes’ primary teaching interests include general psychology, child psychopathology, and abnormal psychology at the undergraduate level and cognitive assessment, psychotherapy, and child psychopathology at the graduate level.
Dr. Gerdes’ primary research interests include parent-child relationships in families of children with ADHD, as well as evidence-based treatments for childhood ADHD. Her secondary research interests include peer relationships and self-perceptions of children with ADHD. To date, her research has involved both basic and applied research that serves to inform and guide clinicians when treating childhood ADHD. She currently directs a childhood ADHD clinic that she opened when she arrived at Marquette. Current projects include examining the role of ADHD subtype in family/parental factors, investigating child, parental, and family factors as predictors of treatment completion and duration, determining the psychometric properties of Spanish-versions of several child behavior and parenting measures, and pilot-testing the effectiveness of standard evidence-based treatment for ADHD, as well as a culturally-modified treatment targeting urban, Latino families in the greater Milwaukee area.
