Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
All normally developing babies learn to speak. For most adults, however, it is hard to learn a new language, even though adults have more knowledge and more developed brains than children have. My research suggests that part of the advantage children have when it comes to learning a language is related to what they do not know: it may be easier for...
The current study aimed to investigate the effects of disfluencies, specifically filled pauses (FP) and unfilled pauses (UP), on reaction time (RT) to target words and hyponyms of target hypernyms(targets = target words + hyponyms of target hypernyms). Two experiments were conducted, withthe first experiment examining the impact of disfluencies on ...
Coupled Oscillator Systems (COS) are presented as a method for sound synthesis and musical instrumentation. Seven systems ranging in size from 3 to 9 oscillators are described with different arrangements all containing a topology of velocity based coupling terms. First, each system is described mathematically. Then, each system is analyzed with rec...
An exploration into the design of a portable music player for people with Alzheimer's and dementia.
Legislative committee meetings are an integral part of the lawmaking process for local and state bills. The testimony presented during these meetings is a large factor in the outcome of the proposed bill. This research uses Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning techniques to analyze testimonies from California Legislative committee meeti...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
We receive bits of information every day. They come to us in a stream. When we listen to music, read a book, or solve a math problem we receive a stream of musical bits, word bits, or math bits. Our minds arrange that stream into a network. A network links together bits of information like musical notes, syllables, or math concepts. Networks help u...
Research on engagement has exploded in recent years. It is of interest in almost any domain of human interaction from workplaces to schools, to business, to games, and many more besides. However, measuring engagement is difficult. For the most part researchers must ask participants about their engagement (which interrupts the engagement) or bring t...
Data science encompasses the most prominent collection of methods for creating scientific knowledge in the 21st century. Currently, data scientists must navigate a wide-ranging and often incoherent ecosystem of tools, in addition to organizing sociotechnical interactions with colleagues across many fields of expertise.This predicament motivates my ...
Many scientists routinely generalize from study samples to larger populations. It is commonly assumed that this cognitive process of scientific induction is a voluntary inference in which researchers assess the generalizability of their data and then draw conclusions accordingly. We challenge this view and argue for a novel account. The account des...
Published in Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition
Humans are able to anticipate abstract task demands and prepare attentional sets accordingly. A popular method to study this ability is to include explicit cues that signal the required level of cognitive control in conflict tasks (e.g., whether or not word meaning will correspond to the task-relevant font color in a Stroop task). Here, we demonstr...
