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
Emma Murugarra
Emma is a PhD candidate in Human Development and official lab gremlin. She studies motivated attention and embodied perception. Her research focuses on how the experience of parenthood shapes perception of threats and opportunities in the environment. She spends her free time binging horror stories, tinkering, and practicing circus arts.
Julia Venditti
Julia is a graduate student studying human infants and their caregivers. Her research focuses on the aspects of infants’ social environments that promote language development. She examines caregiver-infant interactions to investigate how caregivers modify their speech to accommodate infants’ communicative abilities and how that facilitates learning. In her free time, she enjoys cooking and spending time outdoors.
Melody Luo
Melody is a M.A. student studying parent-infant interaction. Her research shows that maternal sensitivity to infant babbling and infant-directed speech are linked during naturalistic interactions.
Collaborators
Samantha Carouso-Peck, Ph.D
I received my Ph.D from Cornell in 2019. I study social effects on vocal learning in songbirds as a model for human speech acquisition. Using behavioral, endocrine, neurobiological, and phylogenetic techniques, I study the cognitive and evolutionary basis of socially guided vocal learning from a comparative perspective. I am currently seeking positions in science communication and outreach.
Jennifer Schwade, Ph.D
Jennifer received her Ph.D in Child Psychology from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota in 1999. She then did post-doctoral training in Linda Smith’s cognitive development laboratory at Indiana University. She was a visiting professor and research associate at Franklin and Marshall College from 2001 – 2004. Jennifer was then a Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University.
Charles Trautmann, Ph.D
Charlie is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychology at Cornell. He received his Ph.D from Cornell and studies the early childhood origins of adult attitudes and behavior, particularly those related to the global environment. He is currently testing a bi-generational approach, called the folded longitudinal method, in which adults are surveyed for their environmental behaviors, while their parents provide information about their childhood activities, particularly during the early years characterized by infantile amnesia.
Vivian Zhang
Vivian is a third-year graduate student in Psychology. Her research focuses on the turn-taking interactions between caregivers and infants. She studies how caregiver responsiveness may help young infants learn to take turns rapidly, and how turn-taking may facilitate infant vocal production learning. Outside the lab she likes to go hiking and watch old movies.
Honors thesis students
Grace Gu
Grace is conducting her honors thesis on the development of associations between immature vocalizing and social responding in zebra finch. She is also assessing the predictive validity of those associations for the quality of developmentally mature, crystallized song. Her future plans include doing additional research and applying to Ph.D programs in clinical psychology.
Annalise Wilk
Annalise is conducting her honors thesis on the role of social feedback in the development of song learning in the zebra finch. She is studying learning at multiple timescales, from seconds to months, to develop a better understanding of how real-time social feedback builds mature song over development. Her future plans include applying to law school.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
The robotics team
Alyssa Jarvis
Christopher De Jesus
The baby team
Tanya Abergel
Elanor Chang
Skyler McQuiston
Samhita Raman
Una Wu
Lucy Yang
Maya Weisberg
The bird team
Pamela Anderson
Clare Daggett
Grace Gu
Gianna Saviano
Annalise Wilk
Mara Xiong
Graduate alumni
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, Associate 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)
Lauren Emberson, Ph.D 2011, Assistant 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
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