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.

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

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.

Jinsol is a Ph.D. candidate working with Drs. Elisa Baek and David Schwartz. Her research focuses on how perceptions of social experience shape individuals’ engagement with the social world. Her work takes developmental and sociocultural perspectives to examine these perception–behavior links using behavioral and neuroimaging methods.

BA Psychology

MS Psychology

Leslie is interested in adolescent peer relations. Her research explores associations between partner approaches to problem-talk and depressive symptomatology. She is also interested in the roles of peer social status and digital modalities in adolescent development.

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.

Idella is working with Dr. Sandy LaTourrette. Her research interests are in further understanding children’s language and cognitive development. Currently, she is examining how children use linguistic context to learn new word meanings, as well as how children form their concepts of mixed emotions from the language they use and/or hear. She is interested in how exposure to other linguistic information, languages, social interaction, and even technology potentially influences children’s word and concept learning. Previously, Idella graduated from UCLA in 2024 and was the Lab Manager for the CHILD Lab in its first year.