Kerstin Plessen's main interest area is mapping of development and self-regulation in children with neuropsychiaric disorders with a focus on behaviour, cognition and underlying neurobiology in areas typically disturbed in these children and adolescents.  Her research group studies developmental aspects of self-regulation such as attention processes, performance monitoring, motivation and social cognition from a transdiagnostic perspective, where these dimensions are compared in children with several neuropsychiatric disorders. Typically clinical psychopathological measures, neuropsychological tests and brain scans are used in collaboration with centres for imaging.

​Kerstin Plessen leads several longitudinal studies in the Capital Region of Denmark, at the University of Copenhagen and at the Universitu of Bergen, which study the development of emotion regulation in children with ADHD and TS. Furthermore, she is responsible for a study with a longitudinal perspective mapping dimensional assessments of children with a high risk of developing psychiatric disorders (The Danish High Risk and Resilience Study – VIA7).

​