Director
Michael Goldstein, Ph.D
Michael is a Professor of Psychology. His main research focus is the evolution and development of vocal communication in songbirds and human infants. He takes a developmental psychobiological systems view, studying parents and infants as a co-evolved and co-developing system of distributed intelligence. Outside the lab he can be found flying gliders, doing photography, and sailing.
Graduate students
Julia Venditti
Julia is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Psychology. She examines how infants’ babbling organizes social interactions with caregivers and creates prime moments for learning. She focuses on how caregivers’ contingent responses to babbling present infants with social and linguistic regularities that facilitate language development.
Ishika Agrawal
Ishika is a M.A. student studying maternal responsiveness to infant vocalizations. She looks at the role that maternal experience plays in how women respond to familiar and unfamiliar infants. In her free time, she enjoys dancing and playing different musical instruments.
Jade Gordon
Jade is an M.A. student interested in the social feedback loop between adults and prelinguistic infants. She is studying the role that attachment and motherhood play in how women interpret ambiguous vocalizations from infants. She is also examining how infants behave when women of different familiarity respond to their vocalizations. Outside of the lab, Jade loves to dance, run, and go to concerts!
Keyi He
Keyi is an M.A. student interested in how infant vocalizations shape caregiver responses during early language development. She is studying how vocalization complexity and directedness co-occur during infant babbling and examining whether these combined signals elicit distinct maternal responses that support language learning. Outside of the lab, she enjoys photography, playing video games, and watching movies.
Honors thesis students
Lucy Yang
Lucy is a senior pursuing majors in Psychology and Information Science along with a minor in Education. She’s currently leading a collaboration between the B.A.B.Y. Lab and Professor Chen Yu at UT Austin. Her current honors thesis project will focus on how the directedness of child vocalizations change the way that their caregivers interact with them. She intends to eventually pursue a Clinical Psychology Ph.D. Outside of the lab, she likes to bake, read books, and take film photos.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Sophia DeSisti
Lorna Ding
Anna Diorio
Mary Ellison
Alyssa Farber
Landon Fried
Roberto Garcia
Angel Gomez
Tania Hao
Julia Kwon
Rebecca Lee
Sarah Liu
Ana Loter
Elise Nishii-Kim
Paula Reilly
Emily Rivkin
Graduate alumni
Claire Chen, M.A. 2025, Lab Manager, University of Chicago
Nicole Wu, M.A. 2025
Emma Murrugarra, Ph.D 2024, Research Associate, New Jersey Institute of Technology
Melody Luo, M.A. 2024, Ph.D student, New York University
Steven Elmlinger, Ph.D 2023, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Princeton University
Katerina Faust, Ph.D 2021
Samantha Carouso, Ph.D 2019, Executive Director, Grassland Bird Trust
Gina Mason, Ph.D 2018, Postdoctoral Research Associate, SLEEP&LEARN/E.P. Bradley Hospital Sleep Research Laboratory, Brown University
Kate Brunick, Ph.D 2014, (primary advisor: James Cutting), Zero to Three
Rachel Albert, Ph.D 2013, Professor of Psychology, Lebanon Valley College
Otilia Menyhart, Ph.D 2013 (co-advisors: Michael Goldstein and Tim DeVoogd)
Kat Agres, Ph.D 2012 (co-advisors: David Field, Michael Goldstein, Michael Spivey), Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore
Lauren Emberson, Ph.D 2011, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of British Columbia
Supriya Syal, Ph.D 2011, Chief Behavioral Scientist, The Innovation Hub of the Privy Council Office, Canada
Sarah Anderson– Ph.D 2010 (primary advisor: Michael Spivey)
Undergraduate alumni
Abbey Charlamb ’25. Honors thesis: Early self-monitoring mechanisms of vocal communication in infants.
Elanor Chang ’25. Honors thesis: The Lombard effect in prelinguistic vocal development.
Tanya Abergel ’25. Honors thesis: Associations between maternal sensitivity and infant-directed speech in depressed and nondepressed mothers.
David Behdad ’25
Kyung Min Lee ’25
Jubin Kim ’25
Anabel Witze ’25
Skyler McQuiston ’24
Annelise Wilk ’23. Honors thesis: Real-time changes to juvenile male zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) song in response to female feedback.
Grace Gu ’23. Honors thesis: Juvenile male zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) learn that their own vocalizations can elicit social responses.
Mara Xiong ’23
Alyssa Jarvis ’22
Christopher De Jesus ’22
Luke Detlor ’22. Honors thesis: The Role of Contingency in Female Zebra (Taeniopygia guttata) Finch Behavior.
Sarra Al-Zayer ’22
Kristin Briney ’22
Carley Kukk ’22
Samantha Chussid ’22
Mary Eng ’22
Cherrie Lan ’22
Julia Lecht ’22
Jacob Levy ’22
Megan Rait ’22
Joelle Tancredi ’22
Katherine Wang ’22
Zixin Xu ’22
Molly Pazol ’21
Mica Carroll ’21. Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholar. Honors thesis: Patterns and prediction: Does statistical learning support the production of movement sequences?
Claire Jones ’21. Honors thesis: Wingstrokes from female zebra finches cause real-time changes in the songs of juvenile males.
Isabella DiGiovanni ’21
SoYoung Kwon ’21
Jenna Steins ’21
Sophia Adams ’21
Megan Waller ’20. Honors thesis: The importance of social context during the development of song learning in zebra finches.
Hannah Tokish ’20
Soumeeka Koneru ’20
Anna Godek ’20
Kelly Zhou ’20
Michael Weiss ’20
Charisse Black ’19.
Sofia Carrillo ’19.
Zoey Costanzo ’19. Honors thesis: The future of Ohio v. Clark: Legal and psychological factors defining juvenile witnesses’ intent in out-of-court statements.
Katie Garrisi ’19. Honors thesis: The effects of temporal structure on social partner identification.
Chelsea McGowen ’19. Honors thesis: Parental influences on infant expectations and reward.
Priyanka Patel ’19.
Arianna Rizzi ’19.
Julie Zalinsky ’19. Honors thesis: The effects of proximal behaviors on pair bond formation and maintenance in zebra finches.
Margot Werner ’19. Honors thesis: Navigating identity changes: Developing a predictive model of successful retirement.
Monisha Afrooz ’19. McNair Scholar. Honors thesis: Observing the characteristics of depressed mothers in comparison to nondepressed mothers regarding speech with their infants.
Severine Hex ’18. Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholar. Honors thesis: Life history as a predictor of language: Investigating the driving factors behind convergent evolution upon a complex linguistic system.
Emily Jaye ’18
Justin Alicea ’18
Sara Schroer ’17. Honors thesis: on the varying social reward of adult interaction patterns: A measurement of infant preference.
Arielle McDermott Amos ’17. Honors thesis: Social learning of a problem-solving foraging task in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).
Stephan Bae ’17
Reade Otto-Moudry ’17
Rondeline Williams ’17
Heejin Lim ’17
Sarah Riordan ’17
Clara Freeman – 16. Honors thesis: Relations between parenting styles and parental behavior: Implications for child learning.
Anna Fasman – 16. Honors thesis: Reexamining the video learning deficit: Differences in infant attention during in-person and video presentations.
Ian Prager – 16
Beth Brody – 16
Rebecca Goldman – 16
Emily Kremens – 16
Jenna Memmolo – 16
Anneliese Raymond – 16
William Wei – 16
Tabitha Kim – 15. Honors thesis: Developmental effects of arginine vasotocin on song learning in the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata).
Claire Foster – 15. Honors thesis: Infant Social Preferences and Learning: Does Social Affiliation Influence Social Word Learning in Toddlers?
Julia Ridley – 15. Honors thesis: Song Preference in the Female Zebra Finch (Taeniopygia guttata): Bridging the Gap Between Song Learning and Function.
Sylvia Rusnak – 15. Honors thesis: The influence of infant social preference and partner responsiveness on infant video learning.
Emma Fitzpatrick– 14
Chantal Hoff– 14, Tanner Dean’s Scholar. Honors thesis: Revisiting cognitive mechanisms of morphological blocking in irregular noun plurals.
Brittany Jaso– 14. Honors thesis: Song learning in the male zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata): The role of parental responsiveness.
Brenna McGuire– 14, Tanner Dean’s Scholar. Honors thesis: Infant word learning in socially crowded environments.
Emily Scarpulla– Ithaca High School research intern, 2013-14
Michael Schramm– 14
Ben Baum– 13
Jenna Chaffee– 13. Honors thesis: Perceiving infants’ babbles: The acoustic properties used in the categorization of infants’ vowels.
Lucas Chang– 13, Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholar. Honors thesis: Distributional learning of categories in infants: From phonemes to actions
Adam Kroloff– 13, Merrill Presidential Scholar. Honors thesis: Infant word learning in chaotic acoustic environments.
Haerin Lee– Ithaca High School research intern, summer 2013
Yi Li– 13 Honors thesis: Real-time effects of adult song contingency on zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) vocal learning
Jessica Mesick– 13
Riku Moriguchi– 13
Kim Shao– 13
Glenn Stewart– 13
Alex True– Ithaca High School research intern, summer 2013
Taylor Udell– 13
Frederique Verly– 13
Maggie Yang– 13
Tracy Anastas– 12
Lauren Bigalow– 12, Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholar. Honors thesis: The perception of goal-oriented action sequences: The role of statistical learning in action understanding
Julia Bleier– Ithaca High School research intern, summer 2012
Emily Coon– 12
Emily Choi– 12
Raymond Chou– 12. Honors thesis: The Role of Social Interaction in Catalyzing Real-Time Changes in Song Development of the Zebra Finch (Taeniopygia guttata)
Erica Everest– 12
Lauren Kurlander– 12
Alexandra Bradley– 11. Honors thesis: The reward value of social interactions
Sarah Edmunds– 11, Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholar. Honors thesis: Infant word learning through video: Contingency and the organization of attention. Winner, best undergraduate poster, International Conference on Infant Studies.
Rachel Elkin– 11. Honors thesis: For whom do infants babble? A test of socially guided vocal learning with biological and non-biological social partners
Nicole Kardassakis– 11, Merrill Presidential Scholar. Honors thesis: Intransitive verb learning in 2.5-year-old children: The effects of variation sets and multiple exemplars
Jane Klinger– 11
Jamie Mash– 11
Erin Tower– 11
Marlene Wang– 11
Melanie Wegener– 11. Honors thesis: Effects of adult song contingency on juvenile song in zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) vocal learning
Rachel Healy– 10
Fiona Kirkpatrick– 10. Honors thesis: Social and non-social mechanisms of early communicative development
Sora Lee– 10
Jeanna Pagnotta– 10. Honors thesis: The social signal value of multimodal infant-directed speech
Linka Preus– 10
John Xu– 10
Rachel Clabby– 09
Amanda Curry– 09
Melissa Frankel– 09, Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholar. Honors thesis: The impact of gender on parents’ teaching of novel object labels
Mary Gilliam– 09
Emily Laucks– 09
Setareh Omran– Hughes Foundation exchange student, summer 2009
April Ryles– 09
Maryam Sajed– 09
Theresa Tan– 09. Honors thesis: A new look at infant preference for infant-directed speech
Ashley Zydel– 09
Rachel Brandstadter– 08
Jesse Northrup– 08
Alissa Worly– 8. Honors thesis: How parents see the world: top-down perception and embodied cognition as potential explanations for perceptual changes that occur with parenthood
Fern Baldwin– 07
Casey Berson– 07
Jacque Briesch– 07. Honors thesis: Protoconversation during joint attention: Does babbling signal a readiness to learn?
Mi Hae Chung– 07
Angela Narayan– 07. Honors thesis: Exploring infant vocal learning in interactions with non-human receivers
Laura Vollmer– 07. Honors thesis: How infants use vocalizations in social interactions
Sara Abelson– 06. Honors Thesis: Measuring grandparental care using nationally representative survey data: An empirical test of predictions derived from evolutionary theory
Carmel Dibner– 06. Honors thesis: Eliciting infant-influenced speech
MuYoung Kim– 06
Andras Szeles– 06. Honors thesis: The influence of implicit and explicit attitudes about gender on parents’ selection of toys for their infants
Betsy Halliburton– 05
Erica Moran– 05
Jeremy Smith– 05