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Jessica Rich, Laboratory
Manager
B.A., 2007, University of
Wisconsin-Madison (Psychology)
JRRich@wisc.edu
I am a recent graduate of the
University of Wisconsin - Madison. As an undergraduate
studying Psychology, I completed an honors thesis with Jenny Saffran looking at
what infants learn from storybooks! I am hoping to continue on
to graduate school to study parenting education.
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Tina Grieco-Calub, Postdoctoral Fellow
B.S., 1995, Communication Sciences
and Disorders (Marywood University)
M.S., 1997, Hearing and Speech Science (Vanderbilt University)
Ph.D., 2005, Neuroscience (Northwestern University)
grieco@Waisman.Wisc.Edu
I am a postdoc who is studying language learning in young
children who use cochlear implants. Currently, our experiments
are focusing on how these children are able to recognize
spoken words (with auditory information alone)
and how the presence of background noise impacts these
abilities.
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Bruna Pelucchi,
PhD
B.S., 1988, University
of Ferrara, Italy (Pharmaceutical Chemistry)
PhD, 1994, University of Ferrara, Italy (Neurobiology and
Neurophysiology)
pelucchi@wisc.edu
I am an honorary fellow
from the University of Ferrara, Italy and I am interested in
understanding how infants find word boundaries in natural languages.
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Jill Lany, Postdoctoral Fellow
B.A., 1998, New
college of Florida (Psychology)
lany@wisc.edu
Languages are rich with probabilistic cues highlighting
language structure (i.e., distributional, phonological, and
semantic
regularites). I’m interested in how infants acquire and
integrate multiple information sources to learn various
aspects of language
structure, including word meanings, syntactic categories, and
sentence structure.
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Jessica Hay,
Postdoctoral Fellow
B.Sc., 1998, McGill
University (Psychology)
PhD, 2005, University of Texas at Austin (Psychology & Center for
Perceptual Systems)
hay@waisman.wisc.edu
I am a postdoc interested in domain-general
learning mechanisms underlying early language acquisition.
Specifically, my research addresses how perceptual systems constrain
statistical learning during phoneme acquisition, word segmentation, and
word learning. I am currently studying some of the following questions.
Are sound distinctions that are easier to hear also easier to learn?
How do the acoustic characteristics of sounds affect rhythmic grouping?
How do perceptual considerations (like rhythmic grouping) impact
statistical learning during word segmentation? During learning do
adults, infants, and chinchillas predominantly track probability
density (i.e., distributional information), correlations, or both? Does
the nature of the auditory input (i.e., speech vs. non-speech) affect
learning? I am collaborating with Jenny Saffran, Keith Kluender, and
Jan Edwards to address some of these questions.
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Kirsten
Thorpe, Postdoctoral Fellow Student
B.A.
2000,
University of Pennsylvania (Psychology and Creative Writing)
Ph.D.
2007,
Stanford University (Developmental Psychology and Linguistics)
kthorpe@wisc.edu
I am a post-doc
interested in language development, and in particular measures
of prediction and comprehension that enable us to understand
how a child is making sense of the world around him or her in
_real-time_. By using children's visual attention as a cue to
what they understand and can anticipate, we can probe how well
and how quickly they can make sense of words or phrases or
patterns that they encounter. I am also working with Dr.
Morton Gernsbacher and Dr. Susan Ellis Weismer at the Waisman
Center to apply techniques used in testing typically
developing infants' and preschoolers' language skils to the
assessment of young autistic children, with atypical language
and cognitive abilities. (Morton's lab website:
http://psych.wisc.edu/lang/index.html)
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Erin M. McMullen, Graduate
Student
B.A., 2001, Case Western Reserve
University (Music and Psychology)
emmcmullen@wisc.edu
I am primarily interested in the
relationship between cognitive processing of language and music.
Research I have conducted in the Learning Languages Adult Lab has
demonstrated that adults with little to no musical training
nevertheless have knowledge about "how things should sound" in the
Western tonal musical system. How is this knowledge acquired? Can
people use the tools they have for learning languages in learning about
music? I am currently working on a project investigating the ability of
adults to learn the statistical structure of a novel musical system
through brief exposure to example phrases.
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Sarah
D. Sahni, Graduate Student
B.S.,
2001, Carnegie Mellon University (Cognitive
Science)
M.S., 2004, University of Wisconsin - Madison (Developmental Psychology)
sdsahni@gmail.com
http://lcnl.wisc.edu/people/sarah/
I am interested in
investigating the underlying domain-general mechanisms involved in
language acquisition. I am currently working with Mark Seidenberg and
Jenny Saffran.
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Melissa Brandon, Graduate
Student
B.S., 2002, University of
Pittsburgh (Neuroscience and Psychology)
mbrandon@wisc.edu
I am interested in how rhythm is
represented and processed across different domains and
modalities, and if the representations change over
development. Is the rhythm of speech processed the same way
as musical rhythm is processed? Are the same rhythms in both
visual stimuli and auditory stimuli represented as equivalent
rhythms?
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Alexa Romberg, Graduate Student
B.S., 2000, Yale University (Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry)
M.S., 2007, University of Wisconsin - Madison (Cognitive Psychology)
alexaromberg@gmail.com
I am interested in how learners acquire, represent and use the
regularities in their environment. What types of statistics are
infants able to track? How does distributional information shape
infants' syntactic knowledge? How are infants similar or different
from adults in their ability to represent and access statistical
regularities?
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Christian
Stilp, Graduate Student
B.S., 2003,
University of Wisconsin - Madison (Perceptual Psychology)
M.S., 2006, University of Wisconsin - Madison (Psychology)
cestilp@wisc.edu
I am a 4th year graduate student
interested in studying infant speech perception and perceptual
development. My research investigates how and when infants
learn to distinguish speech sounds in their native language
using frequency cues. By examining sensitivity to these cues,
we hope to better understand how speech perception (and
hearing in general) changes and grows over the first year of
life.
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Jon Willits,
Graduate Student
willits@wisc.edu |
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Beth Roos,
Graduate Student
B.S., 1994,
Northwestern University
(Communication
Sciences & Disorders)
M.A., 1996, The University of Texas at Austin
(Communication Sciences & Disorders)
eroos@wisc.edu
I am a licensed
speech-language pathologist and doctoral candidate in the
Department of Communicative Disorders, working with Susan
Ellis Weismer and Jenny Saffran. My primary interest is
vocabulary
development in typical and late talking toddlers. By closely
examining toddlers' vocabulary comprehension and word learning
abilities we may ultimately be able to identify which late
talkers are most likely to "catch up" in their language
development versus those who are at greater risk for later
language impairments.
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Scott Miller,
Graduate Student
B.A., 1998 Messiah College
(Psychology)
M.A.,2003 SDSU
(Communicative Disorders - Speech & Language Pathology)
M.S., 2006 University of Wisconsin - Madison (Psychology)
sdmiller1@wisc.edu
I'm a 4th year
graduate student working with Jenny Saffran and collaborating
with Dennis Molfese at the University of Louisville. In
general, I'm interested in how individual differences in
perceptual, motor, and semantic abilities affect speech and
language development. Before coming to Madison, I worked as a
speech-language pathologist and studied late talkers and
specific language impairment (SLI) with Donna Thal at San
Diego State University. Here in Madison I completed a study
with Ruth Litovsky and Keith Kluender in which we demonstrated
variability in echo thresholds for speech sounds based on
waveform onset characteristics. I'm also finishing up a
collaborative project with colleagues at Louisville,
Washington State, and Vanderbilt, in which we used ERP methods
to assess speech perception abilities in preschool-aged
children with SLI. Results suggest partial support for a
popular theory of SLI which holds
that
deficits in rapid auditory processing can account for the
apparently language specific nature of this developmental
disability.
My dissertation work
with Jenny and Dennis will use ERP methods to investigate
whether lateral asymmetries in auditory perception result in
separate but analogous neural mechanisms for the learning of
transitional probabilities in speech vs. tone sequences.
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James
Boxer, Undergraduate Student
jaboxer@wisc.edu
I am a Senior who is currently studying
Psychology, with plans to possibly pursue a career in Clinical
Psychology. This is my first year working with Jenny Saffran
and I am looking forward to learning more about how children
acquire language.
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Jenna Louwagie,
Undergraduate Student
lougwagie@wisc.edu
I am a Sophomore who is
currently studying Business, with plans to continue on to law school
after graduating. I am currently working in the Infant Learning
Lab with Jessica Hay investigating how infants segment speech sounds.
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Ali Greuel,
Undergraduate Student
agreuel@wisc.edu
I am a Senior studying Psychology. I am
currently working on my Senior Thesis project looking at how a
hearing impairment affects a child's ability to learn new
words.
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Diana Dovorany,
Undergraduate Student
dovorany@wisc.edu
I am a Senior studying Psychology and
Neurobiology with an intent to go to Medical School after
graduating. I am interested in studying how stress patterns
influence word acquisition in infants. Currently, I am working on
my honors thesis with Jenny Saffran, examining how infants learn object labels, and if
object labels are more readily learned when they reflect the common
stress patterns of nouns in the English language.
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Hannah Wendel, Undergraduate Student
wendel@wisc.eduI am a Junior studying Psychology with plans to either
attend Medical School or Graduate School after finishing
getting my undergraduate degree. I am currently working in the lab
and am learning to code participant data.
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Sarah Eckstein, Undergraduate Student
seckstein@wisc.eduI am a Junior studying Psychology with hopes to
eventually attend graduate school with an emphasis on Clinical
Psychology. I am currently working in the lab with
Melissa Brandon, studying what infants know about rhythm.
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Lauren Jessessky, Undergraduate Student
jessessky@wisc.eduI am a Senior studying Psychology with a certificate
in business. I plan to work in Human Resources and possibly
attend graduate school for Business after graduating this
Summer. I am currently working in the lab and am
learning to code participant data.
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Joshua Moon, Undergraduate Student
jmmoon@wisc.edu
I am a senior
majoring in Psychology and Legal Studies. This is the first
year I have worked in Jenny Saffran's lab and I am studying
the role physical gestures and actions play in verbal language
development in infants. I am a member of Art Glenberg's
Embodied Cognition Lab and teaming up with the Infant Learning
Lab has made all of my current research possible.
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Doug Scriver, Undergraduate Student
scriver@wisc.edu
I am
Junior majoring in Psychology and also getting a certificate
in Business. After graduating, I hope to find a career that
combines these two interests. I joined Jenny Saffran's lab to
learn more about how children learn!
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Liz Strasfeld, Undergraduate Student
estrasfeld@wisc.edu
I am a Sophomore majoring in Psychology with plans to continue
on in Clinical Psychology. This is my first year with the
Infant Learning Lab, and I am interested in learning
more about how children react to new language stimuli.
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Autumn Huber, Undergraduate Student
arhuber@wisc.edu
I am a senior majoring Psychology. This is my first year
working in the Infant Lab. I also work with the Wisconsin Twin
Project. I hope to continue working with children after I
graduate.
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Mia St. Clair, Undergraduate Student
miastclair@gmail.com
I am a junior majoring in Psychology and getting a certificate
in Asian American Studies. I am still debating if I would like
to pursue a PhD in Counseling Psychology or attend law school
after graduation. I am excited to have an opportunity to work
with children.
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Brette Carpenter, Undergraduate Student
becarpenter@wisc.edu
I am junior double majoring in Anthropology and Psychology.
This is my first experience working in a research lab, and I
am excited to learn about how studies are run. I also
enjoy working with children and am looking forward to learning
about how they learn language.
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Alyssa Lamers, Undergraduate Student
alamers@wisc.edu
I am a freshman planning to double major in Communicative
Disorders and Linguistics. I started working in the lab
because I love children and I am extremely interested in
discovering how they learn language! After grad school, I hope
to continue working with children as a speech pathologist.
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Recent Infant Learning Lab Alumni
2008
Lindsey Lawler
Erin Jonaitis
Diana Dovorany, Medical School Student,
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Joshua Moon
2007
Alex Clark
Isabelle London
Erika Mikulec
Jessica Heresh
Kristie Henslin
Katie Graf-Estes, Assistant Professor,
Department of Psychology, University of California - Davis
Anna Shkolnik
Kelli Minor, Doctoral Student,
Communicative Disorders, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Catherine Moore
2006
Rebecca Seibel
2005
Ellen Breedien
Allison Dahlke
Jillian DeGroot, Doctoral Student,
Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut
Berit Lewison, Merchandising Business
Analyst, Target Corporation
Rebecca Porwoll
2004
Dana Emerson, Doctoral
Student, Chicago School of Professional Psychology
Joshua Kapfhamer, Medical Student,
Medical College of Wisconsin
Julie Rhein, Teach For America
Dr. Erik Thiessen: Assistant
Professor, Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~thiessen/
2003
Joanna Miller
Brianne Karabetsos
Michelle Nowakowski
2002
Amy Finn, Doctoral Student,
Department of Psychology, University of California - Berkeley
Kari Reeck, Doctoral Student,
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Florida
2001
Florencia Anggoro, Doctoral Student,
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University
2000
Michelle Loman, Doctoral
Student, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
1999
Dr. Greg Griepentrog, Medical
Resident, Mayo Clinic
Lana Nenide, Doctoral Student,
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin - Madison
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