Infants are immersed in a world of immense complexity, yet they display knowledge of the people, objects, actions, and sounds in their environments very early in life. My research explores the mechanisms that support this early learning. In particular, the ability to detect statistical regularities may play a fundamental role in how infants learn about a highly complex, highly salient aspect of the auditory world: language. Infants become especially attuned to regularities in the sound patterns of the ambient language, including its phoneme distinctions, sound combinations within words, and its cues to word boundaries in fluent speech. Thus, when infants begin to understand and produce words, they do not start as a blank slate. I am investigating how infants learn from statistical regularities in the language they hear and the nature of what they learn.

I am a fifth year doctoral student in the Developmental area in the Psychology department. I graduated from UC Davis with a degree in Spanish and Psychology B.A. Before starting my PhD at the lab, I worked as a McNair Scholar for two years with Dr. Graf Estes where I was able to conduct and present research in infant bilingual language acquisition. I am broadly interested in the variations in lexical and acoustic properties in a bilingual as well as a monolingual population. More specifically, I’m interested in parent-child interactions and the effect the parent’s speech has on their infant’s language development in a social context. ​

I am a second year psychology doctoral student in the developmental area. I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in Psychology, minoring in ASL/Deaf Studies and Education. Before joining the lab as a PhD student, I worked as a lab manager for Dr. Duane Watson at Vanderbilt University, supporting studies relating to language and cognition. My current research interests broadly relate to infant language acquisition. More specifically, I am interested in the language acquisition of Deaf infant populations learning American Sign Language (ASL) -- especially those who live in a predominantly hearing social environment.

Işıl earned her M.A. in Developmental Psychology under the supervision of Dr. Tilbe Göksun at Koç University in Istanbul. She is interested in understanding how infants acquire language and how they integrate language and cognition. To explore these topics, she investigated the precursors of individual differences in multimodal language comprehension and production in her master’s thesis. She has also focused on both internal factors (e.g., neonatal status, individual differences in early processing of language) and external factors (e.g., caregiver multimodal input, caregivers’ beliefs) in building blocks of cognition. Currently, Işıl is researching how infant-directed speech produced by caregivers aligns with their gestures during specific play tasks at the Language Learning Lab.

I'm a 2nd year majoring in psychology, from Ceres, California and I'm the youngest of three girls. I was raised in an English and Spanish speaking environment. When I was younger I mainly spoke English but in recent years I've grown more confident in my Spanish speaking skills. I'm where I am today because when taking Ap Psychology my senior year, I was fascinated with the developmental unit about how children learn and grow. It became a big interest of mine, and I want to gain a deeper understanding of  how children learn from the world around them. This lab interested me because I grew up in a bilingual environment, it's something I feel connected to and want to learn more about. I'm excited to be getting experience in a subject I find fascinating.

I am a third-year undergraduate student from the Bay Area double-majoring in Psychology and Spanish. Being fluent in both English and Spanish since childhood, I have always had an interest in constantly improving my language skills. As the eldest of five siblings, I would say I have plenty of experience working with children, an aspect of my life that I have always enjoyed. This inspired my interest to pursue a career centered around supporting children. I hope to utilize the knowledge I have developed here at UC Davis to contribute to this lab. I am especially eager to participate in this lab because of how closely it aligns with my career interests and passions. I hope to continue learning about languages and child development.