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.

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.

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.

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.

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)
 

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

 

Jon Willits, Graduate Student
willits@wisc.edu

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.
 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I 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.

I 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.

I 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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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