Graduate Students and Postdocs

My research interests focus on the interplay between children’s developing cognitive skills and their language acquisition. For example, my current research project investigates how learning verbs that express mental states may help children develop theory of mind. I am also interested in cross-linguistic differences in language development, for instance, how children may learn their grammar in different ways depending on how many cues are available in their everyday language input.

(2nd year student, 2021)

Alexis Hernandez is working with Dr. Santiago Morales. Her current research interests are in emotion regulation, psychophysiology, and psychopathology in early childhood.

(entered in 2020)

Alexandra Little is working with Dr. Henrike Moll. Alexandra got her Master’s Degree in Applied Behavior Analysis at USC. Her current research interests include social-cognitive development in toddlers and preschoolers, as well as how children identify others as potential sources of knowledge. 

Her research interests are in developmental neuropsychopathology. In particular, she is interested in the interactions between environmental, biological, and cultural factors that lead to different trajectories of neurocognitive development in children, including mental health and resilience in the face of early adversity. Specifically, she would like to explore the impact of unique early environments on individual differences in neurocognitive and affective development, and the risk for later psychopathology.

(entered in 2019)

Elly Pueschel’s research interest is in the intersection of early social cognition and education. She is working with Dr. Henrike Moll in the Minds in Development (MIDLA) lab, examining how preschool-age children understand teaching and how they themselves take on the role of a teacher. She is also working with Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang at the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning, and Education (CANDLE), investigating how pedagogy impacts the ways in which children monitor and react to their own errors.  

Jinsol is working with Dr. David Schwartz. Her current research interests are antecedents of adolescents’ prosocial and aggressive behaviors both in online and offline contexts and how they differ across cultures. Before coming to USC, she worked as a school counselor in South Korea.

Leslie is working with Dr. David Schwartz. Her research interests include adolescent social media use and influencer culture, online health and wellness misinformation, and social origins of depression and anxiety. She is also interested in the role of gender identity in social development and interpersonal communication.

(2nd year student, 2021)

Minci is working with Dr. David Schwartz. Her research interests are the construction of popularity and behavioral correlates of high-status youth in Eastern Asia, and the impact of bullying and victimization on youth’s mental health across cultures. 

(2nd year student, 2021)

Wani Qiu is working with Dr. Henrike  Moll. Her current interests are children’s social-cognitive development and their understanding of teaching. Prior to coming to USC, she was a Pre-K and Second-Grade classroom teacher.  

Echo is working with Dr. Santiago Morales. Her current research interests are exploring how children process social information, as well as finding predictors for childhood psychopathology. She hopes to intergrate behavior and neuroscience measures to understand the development of emotion and emotion regulation.

Zoey is a Doctoral student working with Dr. Toby Mintz in the USC Language Development Lab. She graduated from Teachers College Columbia University with a Master’s degree in developmental psychology in 2021. Her research interests focus on child language development, especially the role of statistical learning in different aspects of early language acquisition, including word segmentation and object-word mapping.