I run the Cognitive Development (CoDe) Lab at California State University East Bay. We study how humans reason about complex systems, across development. 

One line of my research examines how people reason about interactive relationships, or associations that depend on the state of background variables. I study how acknowledging instability, or lack of robustness of causal and categorical relationships across background circumstances affects learning, inductive inference, language, and decision-making. Grasping the interactive nature and complexity of many real-world associations is an important element of learning natural and social sciences. 


Another line of my work examines how people reason about agents embedded in complex structures that constrain or facilitate agents’ behaviors, depending on their position within the structure. I study how reasoning about social structures develops, how different cognitive mechanisms contribute to it, what behavioral consequences it has, and how language both shapes and reflects it.


I am an Assistant Professor at the Psychology Department at at California State University East Bay. 

I am excited to collaborate with Dr. Kate Ritchie (UC Irvine Philosophy) on an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research and mentorship project "Generics in context: Examining mental biases and resources in social and science communication and learning", funded by NSF (total $1,004,003).
I

.