Background
Yihan is a doctoral student in Developmental Psychology working with Lin Bian and Susan Goldin-Meadow. She graduated from McMaster University with a B.A in Psychology and a specialization in Mental Health. Prior to graduate school, Yihan worked as a lab manager in the EArly Social Thinkers Lab at the University of Chicago.
Research Interests
Broadly, Yihan is interested in children’s reasoning and attitudes about social categories, and how they make inferences about social hierarchies and abilities. Specifically, she plans to study how verbal and nonverbal modalities can play a role in these processes.
Background
Alfred is a doctoral student in the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience program working with Marc Berman. Alfred received a BA from the University of British Columbia with a major focus in Psychology and a minor focus in Philosophy. Then, Alfred received an MA in Computational Social Science from the University of Chicago, where he studied sustained attention lapses and their neural antecedents with Monica Rosenberg.
Research Interests
Alfred’s research interests are situated at the intersection of human functional neuroimaging and machine learning.
Background
Chong Zhao is a doctoral student in the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience program working with Edward Vogel in the Awh/Vogel lab. He received his B.S. in Engineering Science, Cognitive Studies and Mathematics in the spring of 2020 at Vanderbilt University.
Research Interests
Chong is broadly interested in the neural representations of visual attention and memory. Currently, he is working on decoding visual representations using human scalp EEG recordings.
Background:
Yena is a doctoral student working with Howard Nusbaum. She received her BA (Honors) in Psychology from the University of UChicago in 2021. She joined the Behavioral Science PhD program at Booth in 2021.
Research Interests:
Yena primarily studies how people change. At the individual level, what kinds of change do people want for themselves? At the interpersonal level, how do people get others to change? Using qualitative and experimental methods, both in and out of the lab, she examines the challenges and questions people face when it comes to change and, ultimately, human flourishing.
Background:
Marine is a doctoral student in Cognition working with Susan Goldin-Meadow and Marc Berman. She graduated from University College London in September 2022, with a Master of Research degree in Speech, Language and Cognition. For her thesis, she investigated how caregivers’ gestures can be adapted during natural conversations with children and the role of gestures in child-directed language. After graduation, she was also actively engaged in studies related to gesture production and comprehension in people with aphasia.
Research Interests:
Marine is broadly interested in exploring children’s understanding towards multimodal information such as gestures and eye gaze during conversations. She is particularly interested in understanding how these factors can influence learning processes and development in children.
Background:
Susanne is a doctoral student in the integrative neuroscience program working with Brian Prendergast and Leslie Kay. She graduated with a B.A. in Psychology from Rutgers University in 2023. There, she worked in a lab studying psychoneuroimmunology under the direction of Dr. Alexander Kusnecov.
Research Interests:
Susanne is interested in the involvement of immune and endocrine responses in learning, motivation, and social behavior, specifically in the context of psychological or physical stress.
Background:
Elizabeth is a doctoral student in Social Psychology. She graduated from the University of Iowa in 2021 with a B.S. in Psychology. She previously worked as a lab manager at the University of Chicago with Marc Berman in the Environmental Neuroscience Lab where her research focused on the effects of the environmental on cognition and social interactions.
Research Interests:
Elizabeth is broadly interested in studying culture, social ecology, and well-being. Her current research questions focus on which events make our life Psychologically Rich, how the predictors and consequences of well-being may differ across cultures, and the differences and similarities of perceptions of social interactions across cultures.
Background:
Claire is a doctoral student in the Cognition program working with Boaz Keysar. She received her B.A. in Psychology with minors in Cognitive Science and Chinese from Carleton College in Spring 2021. After college, she worked as a project coordinator and lab manager for the Cognition, Learning, and Development Lab under Nicole McNeil.
Research Interests:
Claire’s research interests broadly include the interplay between language context and cognitive processes in shaping the conceptual understanding that underlies the decision-making process.
Background:
Tania is a doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program working with Dr. Susan Levine and Dr. Katherine Kinzler. She graduated from Stanford University in 2020 with a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and a minor in Data Science. After graduating, Tania worked as a research associate for Carnegie Mellon University’s Cognitive Development Lab, and as a lab manager for University of Michigan’s Conceptual Development Lab. In her research, she has previously investigated healthy-eating mindsets, cross-cultural development of causal relational reasoning, associative and taxonomic priming effects on the development of word learning, perception and use of generic language, and children’s causal understanding of viral transmission.
Research Interests:
Tania is broadly interested in language and concept learning, and how it unfolds in diverse environments. Specifically, she is interested in investigating a) how the development of quantitative reasoning and number word learning is affected by different cognitive, linguistic and sociocultural factors, and b) how language and quantitative reasoning affects people’s social skills such as negotiation.
Background:
Jie is a doctoral student in Computational Cognitive Neuroscience working with Jean Decety. She received her bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Applied Psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara in Fall 2021.
Research interests:
Jie is interested in exploring the neural and computational mechanisms underlying how emotions and moral judgments are related to human decision-making. She is particularly interested in how decisions and judgments are guided by moral conviction.