I am an NIH NRSA postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University, working with Dr. Sandra Waxman. I received my PhD in Cognitive Science from Brown University under the supervision of Drs. James Morgan and Dave Sobel. I am also a research associate at UC Berkeley where I work with Dr. Fei Xu and a visiting scholar at Stanford University, working with Dr. Michael Frank.

 

I investigate the development of symbolic communication and verbal reference.
My current research focuses on:

1. The development referential links between words and mental representations and the role of these links in language-mediated knowledge acquisition;

2. Inferences about speakers' epistemic competence from their use of language and the role of such inferences in selective learning.

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I am working to expand my research focus to linguistic and sociocultural diversity in the development of symbolic communication. 

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I use a combination of behavioral and eye-tracking measures and employ live acting, video-recordings, video-chat, and online apps in my experimental manipulations. I also use computational models and corpus analysis in my research. Recently, I joined the Lookit platform and run intermodal preferential looking (IPL) studies online. 

 

In 2018-2019 I was a visiting researcher and lecturer (Computational Models in Cognition, Applied Early Developmental Science) at UC Berkeley. I continue collaborating with Drs. Fei Xu and Mahesh Srinivasan.

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Apart from my main lines of research, I have studied children's causal reasoning and speech sound categorization in adults with autism spectrum disorders.

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As my pastime, co-host the It's Innate podcast with colleagues Deon Benton and Candace Lapan and work as a PARKES radio telescope operator with the Breakthrough Listen initiative.

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