opportunity to study children’s cognitive and social development using a variety of methods to examine how children learn across cultures. Most recently, I have explored children's use of imitation as a tool for cultural learning in the U.S. and Vanuatu. I am also interested in examining the effects of social conventions on children’s social group cognition in order to understand how rituals facilitate group cohesion and identity formation.

 

I graduated from UT Austin with a B.S. in Psychology, a B.A. in Plan II Honors, and a minor in History in 2013. As an undergraduate, I took coursework from a variety of social science disciplines. My undergraduate honors thesis examined how children reason about both instrumental and conventional functions of imitation. Specifically I examined how portraying a task as ritual versus instrumental differentially influenced children's imitative behavior and accuracy in detecting differences. I also received my M.A. in Psychology from UT Austin in 2015.