How do people learn language in the face of its vast complexity? My research shows how domain-general cognitive mechanisms can explain many sophisticated linguistic behaviors, from word learning to sentence processing in both the spoken and written modalities. My NSF GRFP-funded dissertation work at Cornell University focused on how individual differences in statistical learning and memory predict spoken language skills in adults, and on developing improved methods of testing these phenomena. This work was awarded the Cognitive Science Society’s Glushko Dissertation Prize in 2023. My work as an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the LLAMB Lab at Yale University expanded these findings, investigating how individual differences in statistical learning fundamentally shape reading development in pre- and early literate children.
Most recently, I have been awarded a K99 Pathway to Independence grant by the NIH, where I am using EEG frequency tagging to uncover neural markers of implicit statistical learning in children and establish how these markers predict readiness to read in pre-literate children.