I am a cognitive scientist interested in how infants and young children learn about and explore their world.

My research focuses on embodiment - the ways children's bodies and actions shape their perceptual experiences, influence the behavior of social partners, and change the input available for learning. I study natural behavior using wearable eye trackers that record where participants look as they move around their environment and perform every-day tasks. With eye trackers, I study learning from the child's perspective and directly quantify the information they have access to. While working with Chen Yu, I developed the FIELD Project which brings eye trackers to toddlers' homes to study families in the most naturalistic environment possible. Children's worlds are rich with people, places, and things and I believe that all of that richness needs to be considered in our research. 

Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow working with Mary Hayhoe at UT Austin's Center for Perceptual Systems. I completed my PhD in Psychology at UT Austin and my MA in Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University. In graduate school I worked with Chen Yu and was funded by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the NIH Training Program in Integrative Developmental Process. As an undergraduate, I worked with Michael Goldstein for my Honors Thesis in Psychology at Cornell University. (see full CV)