I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California Davis Medical Center. I completed my undergraduate education in Psychology here at UC Davis before earning my PhD in Psychology from Boston University in 2014. My graduate training focused on language and communication development in infants and young children, including autistic toddlers and their younger infant siblings. I returned to UC Davis as a postdoctoral fellow at the MIND Institute in order to learn more about early interventions for families to support children’s early development. Over the past several years, my research has focused on adapting our laboratory- and clinic-based assessments and family supports for telehealth, so that we can reach more families outside of the University settings. Our long-term goals are to get families connected with existing services faster, as well as developing new supports for families with early developmental concerns.  This work is interdisciplinary, and I am very fortunate to collaborate with truly excellent students and colleagues at UC Davis and the MIND Institute. 

Project link: https://health.ucdavis.edu/mind-institute/research/telehealth-evaluation-development-for-infants/

Representative publications:

1. Talbott, M.R., Dufek, S., Young, G. (2023). Adaptation of in-person curriculum tools for remote assessment of infants and toddlers with social communication concerns in community-based settings. In M.M. Channell & L. J. Mattie (Eds.), International Review of Research in Developmental Disabilities (171-204). Academic Press. 
2. Talbott, M.R. Lang, E., Avila, F., Dufek, S., Young, G.S. (2022). Short report: Experiences of Caregivers Participating in a Telehealth Evaluation of Development for Infants (TEDI). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 52(12), 5266–5273. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05607-x. PMID: 35945386; PMCID: PMC9362962.
3. Talbott, M.R., Dufek, S., Young, G., Rogers, S.J. (2021). Leveraging Telehealth to Assess Autism Likelihood in the First Year of Life. Autism: the international journal of research and practice, 26(5), 1242–1254. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613211045596
4. Talbott, M.R.^†, & Miller, M. R^†. (2020) Future Directions in Early Identification and Intervention for Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Infancy. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 50(5), 688-700. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2020.1790382
5. Talbott, M.R., Young, G.S., Munson, J., Estes, A., Vismara, L., & Rogers., S.J. (2020). The Developmental Sequence and Relations between Gesture and Spoken Language in Toddlers with ASD. Child Development. 91(3):743-753. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13203
6. Rogers., S.J., Estes, A., Vismara, L., Munson, J., Zierhut, C., Greenson, J., Dawson, G., Rocha, M., Sugar, C., Senturk, D., Whelan, F., Talbott, M. (2019). Enhancing low-intensity coaching in parent implemented Early Start Denver Model intervention for early autism: A randomized comparison treatment trial. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. 49 (2), 632-646. Doi: 10.1007/s10803-018-3740-5