Désia Bacon, PhD | Morse Scholar Alumni
Morse Scholar Alumni 2020–2023
Current Position
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
San José State University
Contact
About
Désia Bacon earned her MS and PhD in (Developmental) Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, a Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellow, and a Morse Scholar. Broadly, Désia is interested in how children use the varied information in their environment to help them learn. Her primary research centers on the intersection of language and social development, with a specific focus on how young children utilize perceptual and social cues in their diverse environments to facilitate their language learning. Before pursuing graduate education, Désia earned her BS in Psychology at the University of Central Florida where she was a McNair Scholar.
Education
| 2017 | BS | Psychology | University of Central Florida |
| 2019 | MS | Psychology | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| 2023 | PhD | Psychology | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| 2020–2023 | Morse Scholar | Major Professor: Jenny Saffran, PhD | Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison |
In the News
Videos
Dr. Desia Bacon Interview
Desia Bacon talks about her field of work, why she does it and how it relates to mental health & disability
Selected Publications
Bacon, D., & Saffran, J. (2022). Role of speaker gender in toddler lexical processing. Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies, 27(2), 291–300. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12455
Bacon, D., Weaver, H., & Saffran, J. (2021). A Framework for Online Experimenter-Moderated Looking-Time Studies Assessing Infants’ Linguistic Knowledge. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 703839. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.703839