Mahesh Srinivasan, Ph.D. [CV] [Research Statement]

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and a member of the Cognitive Science Faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, I was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Before this, I received a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Harvard University in 2011, and received a B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University in 2005. Using empirical methods from developmental psychology and psycholinguistics, our lab's research explores how linguistic, cognitive, and social abilities arise and interact with one another during human development and across different cultures.

Emily Chau

Hello and welcome! I’m a recent Berkeley graduate interested broadly in how people weigh competing sources of information to reach a goal they might have. I'm excited to explore this further in the intersection of language and cognition as I'm fascinated by how words in itself act as information units, often without needing to be explicitly told their meaning. If you have any questions about the lab—whether it be working in it or participating in one of our studies—please feel free to reach out.

Ye Rang Park, Ph.D.

I’m a postdoctoral researcher supporting the Psychology and Economics of Poverty Initiative at the Center for Effective Global Action with Dr. Mahesh Srinivasan and Dr. Supreet Kaur. I completed my PhD in human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, focusing on resilient parenting in the context of poverty. I am interested in how parents navigate financial hardships and how we can empower parents to help their children develop important early skills for later adaptive cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes. My current research examines how financial scarcity affects family dynamics, including parent-child interactions, inter-parental relationships, and early childhood developmental outcomes.

 

Paul Haward, Ph.D.

I’m a postdoctoral researcher working with Dr. Mahesh Srinivasan. Previously, I completed my graduate training with Dr. Susan Carey at Harvard University. My research focuses on the structure of human concepts. Humans are the only species to acquire such a vast stock of concepts—concepts like table, tiger, artist, universe, democracy, and hexagon. The concepts we possess have a profound impact on the way we think. They frame our interpretation of the external world, and we combine them together to produce complex, intricate thoughts using natural language. My research investigates the structure of these concepts, how that structure then skews the way we see the world around us, and the role it plays when concepts are combined.

 

Jenny Lu, Ph.D.

I’m a postdoc working with Dr. Mahesh Srinivasan at UC Berkeley and Dr. Terra Edwards at UChicago. Influenced by my PhD work at UChicago working with Susan Goldin-Meadow, I investigate how we develop the ability to communicate in a variety of social environments and modalities. My current work focuses on how DeafBlind children develop the ability to coordinate and establish joint attention with others within the tactile modality. The second aspect of my research asks how our specific world experiences and learning biases influence the structure of our language on different timescales. To answer these questions, I examine how constellations of signs and their meanings within homesign systems and an emerging sign language within the DeafBlind community, protactile language, are developed over time.

 

Marina Ortega Andrés, Ph.D.

I am a postdoctoral researcher from the Basque Government at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and a visitor researcher at the Department of Psychology in the University of California. I work on polysemy and language development with Dr. Mahesh Srinivasan. I also work at the Lindy Lab on language processing in the ASC population. I finished my PhD in June 2020 at the University of the Basque Country. My thesis was about theoretical issues on polysemy and copredication. I am also interested in other fields like Feminist Philosophy, Social Identity, and Epistemic Injustice.

Monica Ellwood-Lowe

As a graduate student working in the LCD Lab and the Building Blocks of Cognition Lab, I am interested in how children’s early experiences shape their linguistic and cognitive development. Why do some children seem to thrive in school, while others don't? My research integrates what we know about the structure of society with what we know about children's brain development to understand the barriers some children face to success, and how they are able to adapt and thrive in the face of these barriers. I use behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging methods to help answer these questions. My graduate research is generously supported by the NSF GRFP and the UC Berkeley Chancellor's Fellowship.

 

Antonia Langenhoff

I am fascinated by the development of normative and linguistic cognition, and how these cognitive abilities interact with our uniquely human social reasoning skills. As a graduate student, I explore the role that engaging in social discourse and argumentation plays for children’s developing cognitive skills. Specifically, I investigate the role of disagreement as a potential mechanism for cognitive development.

 

Roya Baharloo

I am interested in social cognition in childhood. I am fascinated by how children—even as early as infancy—reason and make sense of our complex social world. Further, I am curious about how this reasoning is shaped by our environment. My current research investigates how children conceptualize and make inferences about social groups. For example, when do children start to endorse common racial stereotypes? I hope my research sheds light on how we can reduce harmful intergroup phenomena, such as bias and prejudice.

 

Victoria Keating

As a graduate student working in the LCD Lab and the Mind and Society Lab, I am interested in how the people and cultures children are exposed to affect how they think about the world and others. My current research interests are focused on how children learn to think about those that are different from themselves. For instance, how does the way we communicate about race with children shape their concepts of their own race and others? Additionally, I am curious about the multiple ways we can think about diversity and its various impacts.

 

Sophie Regan

I am broadly interested in how children learn to communicate using language, especially how their burgeoning language skills interact with their developing understanding of the social world. My current research interests focus on the development of pragmatic reasoning, specifically how children learn to integrate information about specific speakers when interpreting and producing utterances. I am also interested in how language shapes the formation of different category representations and in adaptation and convention formation in conversation.

 

Hugh Rabagliati, Ph.D.

I am a Chancellor's Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. I became interested in the science of child development as an undergraduate, spent many years training in developmental psychology in America, and returned to the UK to start the RabLab in 2013. I like hiking, pasta, and noodling around the ancient world with my classicist fiancée Monica. I dislike cutting my hair.

 

Nadya Vasilyeva, Ph.D.

I am a postdoctoral researcher working across three labs (Dr. Mahesh Srinivasan's Language and Cognitive Development Lab, Dr. Alison Gopnik's Cognitive Development Lab, and my primary advisor Dr. Tania Lombrozo's Concepts and Cognition Lab). In my research I explore connections between explanation, inductive inference, and causal reasoning. At the LCD lab, I am currently working on a project on contrast inference (exploring pragmatic inferences about unmentioned categories and attributes) and preparing a study examining structural explanations of speech injustice.

 

Audun Dahl, Ph.D.

I'm an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Most of my research investigates early moral development. I'm especially interested in how young children begin to help others and come to see it as wrong to harm others. Combining naturalistic and experimental methods, we are studying how these developments take place through social interactions in everyday life.

 

Yang Xu, Ph.D.

My research concerns the intersection of semantics, cognition and computation. I am particularly interested in how word meanings vary over time and across different languages, and a computational account of these phenomena that explains the underlying cognitive principles.

 

Alex Carstensen, Ph.D.

I’m a postdoctoral researcher in the Language and Cognition Lab at Stanford University. I completed my PhD in psychology at UC Berkeley and postdoctoral research at Radboud University in the Netherlands, focusing on the nature of category systems across languages: how these semantic structures vary, evolve, and influence thought. My current research examines the joint roles of language and culture in the development of abstract reasoning. I’m collaborating with the LCD lab to study contributions from language to children’s changing conceptualizations of space.

 

Katharine Tillman

I'm a graduate student from the Language and Development Lab at UC San Diego. I'm interested in how children acquire an adult-like concept of time, and roles that language and spatial cognition play in this process. I also study how kids learn abstract words in general, including time words, number words, and color words. Prior to starting my graduate work at UCSD, I received my BA in Psychology from NYU, where I conducted research on visual perception. Outside the lab, I enjoy creative writing, meditation, and trying to keep up with my 2-year-old daughter.

 

Andrew Bartnof

I studied English and Philosophy at Pitzer College, lived in Indonesia for a year as a Fulbright Scholar, and spent some time working in the maple forests in Québec. I then worked as a translator, and as a dubbing coordinator at a post-production facility. Now I am a doctoral student at Northwestern University. I love studying the processes that drive language acquisition!

 

Kelsey Moty

I graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Psychology and Linguistics and a minor in Polish Language and Literature, and am currently a graduate student at New York University. My research interests revolve around the following questions: 1) How does the language we speak influence how we think about and perceive the world? 2) How do children and adults learn language? and 3) How do children and adults form and revise categories? Currently, I am exploring how children use categories across different domains to make inferences, how they integrate information from multiple sources to form coherent categories, and how they make use of pragmatic information to learn language.

 

Rachel Jansen

I am a Ph.D. student in the Computational Cognitive Science Lab, advised by Tom Griffiths and Anna Rafferty. I am passionate about employing methods from machine learning and probabilistic modeling to the study of mathematics cognition and education. I am specifically interested in understanding more about how people learn math so that I may work towards improving both teaching practices and online educational tools. One branch of my research is centered around math learning in adults using an online algebra tutor developed by me and my advisors. I am using this tool to explore ways in which we can influence motivation and alter students' perceptions of mathematics, to ultimately remove emotional and psychological barriers so that more people may appreciate and excel at the subject. I am fortunate to be funded by the UC Berkeley Chancellor's Fellowship and NSF GRFP.

 

Ariel Starr, Ph.D.

I am currently an assistant professor at the University of Washington in the Department of Psychology. I was previously a postdoctoral researcher in the LCD Lab and in Dr. Silvia Bunge's Building Blocks of Cognition Lab. My research investigates how children create new knowledge from existing representations. I’m particularly interested in how language interacts with other cognitive abilities over development to give rise to uniquely human abilities. My lab uses behavioral and eye-tracking methodologies with infants and children to answer questions about the development of memory, language, numerical cognition, abstract concepts, and other topics.

 

Lena Luchkina

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher in Sandra Waxman's Infant and Child Development Center at Northwestern University. I was a visiting researcher in the LCD Lab and in Dr. Fei Xu’s Berkeley Early Learning Lab from fall 2018 - summer 2019. I received my PhD from Brown University in December 2018, doing my dissertation work with Drs. James Morgan and Dave Sobel. My research focuses on how children learn words and use their social knowledge to make inferences about word meanings. Aside from word learning, I study speech sound categorization in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders. As an undergraduate, I studied management and finance but later decided to become a cognitive scientist.

 

Estelle Berger

I am originally from Portland, Oregon and was previously a student in the Psychology Post-Baccalaureate Program and working in the LCD Lab as a research assistant. Currently, I am working in Ron Dahl's lab in the Institute of Human Development here at Berkeley. Before arriving at UC Berkeley, I attended Brown University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies. Now, I am very interested in exploring how early life experiences and environments shape one’s sense of identity, cognitive development, and overall wellbeing. My current research focuses on how a child's home environment affects learning and attention.

 

Aneesa Conine-Nakano

I'm the lab manager of the Social Learning Lab at Stanford University. I completed my B.A. in Psychology at UC Berkeley in 2022, and my work with the LCD lab investigates how language and cognitive processes in childhood interplay with the development of stereotypes. I am interested in how children use cues, such as emotion and language, to make inferences about people and their environment. In my free time, I enjoy hiking and photography!

Emily Chun

Hi! My name is Emily and I’m a fourth-year undergraduate at Berkeley majoring in cognitive science with an intended double major in data science. I am interested language acquisition, particularly in regards to how children learn the meanings of novel words. This will be my first semester working in the LCD Lab, and I’m excited to learn about cognitive research. In my spare time, I love playing casual video games and trying new places to eat with my friends.

 

Chelsea Jimenez

Hi! My name is Chelsea and I am a fourth-year undergraduate at UC Berkeley majoring in psychology! I am interested in becoming informed about how different social environments affect language development. In addition, I am also intrigued to learn more about how social abilities arise in children. I am very excited to have this opportunity to join the LCD lab and expand my knowledge about child developmental psychology! In my spare time, I love to explore new music, visit new cities, and go thrifting.

 

Hannah Hermann

Hi y'all! I'm a fourth-year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley majoring in Psychology and Media Studies. I love looking at how language influences our cognition and helps shape how we see certain aspects of the world. Furthering this interest while working with children is a dream come true. Academically, I've enjoyed getting to take so many fascinating psychology classes including Dr. Srinivasan's very own Language Acquisition class! When I'm not holdup in the library you can find me studying at Strada or Milano sipping on a blended mocha.

 

Christian Burke

I am a fourth-year undergraduate majoring in Cognitive Science and French, with a minor in Global Poverty & Practice. I focus on gendered language in early childhood development and how social roles are taught, learned and perpetuated, beginning in this formative period. This will be my first semester at the LCD Lab and I feel very fortunate to be part of such an incredible team with so many diverse interests. Outside of the lab, I watch anime religiously, write poetry, sketch, paint and sculpt. I also love reading and discussing anthropology, sociology and philosophy.

 

Carol Chen

Hello! My name is Yihan Chen, and you can call me Carol. I am a second-year undergraduate at UC Berkeley majoring in Psychology. I have always been intrigued by how language development can reflect so much about the mysteries of the human mind, and I enjoy Professor Srinivasan’s Language Acquisition course very much, so I’m so excited to join the LCD Lab this semester! In my free time, I’m a huge fan of the Middle Earth, and I love dancing, watching figure skating, and musicals.

 

Eli Cruz

Hi! My name is Eli. I am a fourth-year undergraduate double majoring in psychology and linguistics. I am incredibly interested in the overlap between these two fields and how they play into child development. I come from a big family with about twelve (and counting) cousins under the age of twelve so I have been around children my whole life. I hope my work in the LCD lab will help me pursue my research interests relating to language acquisition and children's ability to understand conceptual language. In my free time I love going to the movies to watch the latest indie film or finding a nice, shady spot in the park to read.

 

Sooyeon Kim

Hello! My name is Sooyeon (she/her) and I am a second-year undergraduate at UC Berkeley majoring in Cognitive Science and an intended minor in BioEngineering. I am interested in learning about the mechanisms behind language acquisition and how social environments can impact cognitive development. This will be my first semester as a research assistant in the LCD lab and I am very excited to grow my knowledge in developmental psychology. In my free time, I enjoy painting, spending time outdoors, playing guitar, thrifting, and curating spotify playlists.

 

Priscilla Niayesh

Hello! My name is Priscilla and I am a senior at UC Berkeley majoring in psychology. I am passionate about learning how language acquisition develops within children, and also viewing how different social situations can affect children’s development. I am very excited to be a part of this lab and further my knowledge in the realm of developmental psychology! In my free time I love baking desserts, playing with my puppy, and spending time with my friends and family.

 

Fiona Mei

Hello! My name is Fiona and I am a third-year undergraduate at UC Berkeley majoring in psychology and data science. I am interested in how different language systems can affect people's performances and characteristics. I am excited to learn more in this field with LCD this semester! In my free time, I love traveling, listening to Kpop and dancing.

 

Emma Chang

Hi! My name is Emma and I am a third-year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley studying Cognitive Science. I love working with children and am interested in learning about human development and how children acquire such complex skills like language and other cognitive functions. I’m really looking forward to working in the LCD lab and am super grateful for this opportunity! In my free time, I enjoy reading, baking, watching TV, playing piano as well as playing badminton.

 

Youyu Li

Hi there! I am Youyu from Suzhou, China. I am a senior at Colby College, majoring in Psychology and Economics. I am interested in learning about the origins of racial stereotypes and intervention strategies to reduce them. I am also interested in exploring the effects of gender expectations on children’s personality development. Through my future research, I hope to promote better human development. I am working with Roya on her project about language complexity in developing stereotypes about competence. In my free time, I love listening to music, playing video games, and investing in stocks.

 

Grace McLennan

Hiya! I’m Grace a third-year student from the University of Bath all the way in England! I’m here in Berkeley this year working as a Research Intern and am excited to learn more in depth about developmental psychology. I have always been fascinated by the power of language especially during childhood and how even subtle cues can shape who we become as people. In my free time you can probably find me getting lost whilst exploring the city and going to concerts!

 

Tiffany Cheung

Hey there! My name is Tiffany and I am a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Psychology. I was brought up in Hong Kong and spent my first two years of undergraduate at University of Bath, UK. I am working as an exchange student intern this year at UC Berkeley. I enjoy working with children and have always been fascinated the way that children, especially how they are learning about their surroundings through language. I am very excited to learn more about developmental psychology during my time in the LCD Lab, look forward to meeting all the fellow lab members! In my free time, I love all sorts of music-related things. Hmu for a jamming session!

 

Ece Tabag

Hi! I'm Ece (pronounced as AJ), a first-year undergraduate at UC Berkeley with an indented major in Cognitive Science. As the oldest of my three siblings, I have always been interested in children's development. Through my experiences of teaching algorithmic thinking skills to younger kids, I had the opportunity to observe their learning behavior closely. I am very excited to be a part of the LCD Lab, and I look forward to expanding my knowledge of children's cognitive and linguistic development. In my free time, I usually FaceTime my brothers in Turkey, explore new restaurants with my friends, sing a lot, play the ukulele, and read while lying down under the sun on the Glade.

 

Rachel Skwersky

Hi! My name is Rachel (she/her) and I am a second-year undergraduate student majoring in cognitive science pursuing a double minor in linguistics and data science. I am fascinated by language acquisition from a humanistic and computational perspective, and my focus is currently on how sign language phonology and semantics influence vocabulary development. This is my first semester with the LCD and I'm so excited to grow my knowledge and work with other passionate individuals. In my free time, I love reading on the beach and going to cafes.

 

Ananya Sharma

Hi! I’m Ananya. I’m a third year undergraduate majoring in Psychology and Data Science. I am interested in how social contexts influence the cognitive development of individuals, particularly children. I am also highly interested in research that focuses on populations which don’t fall into the WEIRD category. I am excited to learn more about Cognitive Development, particularly focusing on the Indian population during my time at LCD. In my spare time, I enjoy creative writing, reading and playing badminton.

 

Sophia Rizzuti

Hi! My name is Sophia and I am a fourth year undergraduate student majoring in Psychology and minoring in Public Policy. I am from Marin County, California. I am interested in cognitive and linguistic development and specifically how these processes differ depending on various external social factors (such as socioeconomic status, community, and education). I love looking at the intersection of Psychology & Policy. I have worked with children for numerous years so I am so excited to work in the LCD Lab at Berkeley. Outside of school, I am a certified yoga instructor and I love to hike, cook, and travel!

 

Mitchell Chan

Hello all! My name is Mitchell and I am a fourth-year undergraduate at UC Berkeley majoring in Psychology. My hope is to eventually be working in the clinical setting, although many of my interests lie in studying how children develop language, and how this may provide some insight into effective language learning strategies in adults. This is my first semester being a part of the LCD lab and I'm super excited to learn as much as I can! When not swamped with school, I love to dance, learn languages, and rock climb!

 

Alex Buntin-Nakamura

Hello! My name is Alex and I am a second-year at UC Berkeley. I intend to major in Cognitive Science and pursue the Berkeley Certificate in Design Innovation. The most compelling thing to me about my intended major is its interdisciplinary nature, and I’m excited that LCD reflects that. I am interested in how social upbringing and linguistic cognition intersect, and am eager to be partaking in this kind of work as a research assistant. In my free time, I am an avid golfer and I enjoy all forms of art, whether it be architecture, drawing, music, or graphic design.

 

Rachel Kent

Hello! My name is Rachel, and I am a third-year, first-generation undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. I am majoring in Psychology and pursuing a minor in Education. I am from Sacramento California and a few of my hobbies include going to the beach, spending time in nature, painting, journaling, reading books, doing yoga, and spending time with loved ones. I have always been interested in the cognitive development of children and how our early environments can influence our personalities, social relationships, and cognitive functioning. I plan to go to graduate school and eventually work as an Occupational Therapist Specializing In ASD. I am extremely thankful for the opportunity to work with the LCD lab, gain professional experience, expand my knowledge of cognitive development, and foresight future career paths.

 

Aidana Almazova

Hello, my name is Aidana (she/her) and I'm currently a student in the Psychology Post-Baccalaureate Program at UC Berkeley. As an undergraduate, I studied finance and accounting and spent three years working in the industry but later decided to switch careers and study psychology. I'm from Kyrgyzstan and grew up speaking Russian and Kyrgyz languages. Later in life, I learned English, Turkish, and French. My interest in languages and psychology led me to explore linguistic development in children. I'm excited to work in the LCD lab and look forward to contributing to the team. In my free time, I like to learn languages (currently working on my Korean) and bake bread, pastries, and desserts.

 

Harry Cox

My name is Harry Cox, and I am from Gold Coast, Australia, and I'm a current fourth year majoring in Cognitive science. I have a fascination into developmental psychology and language acquisition, particularly second language acquisition/ learning, and how current research can be used to maximise rates of retention and use of the language. I also am intrigued into how our acquisition and use of language influence our view of the world. In my spare time I love cooking, surfing, and fishing.

 

Sini Patra

Hi! My name is Sini and I'm a first year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley majoring in Cognitive Science and Psychology. I am excited to work at the LCD lab and learn more about linguistic and cognitive development. I have always been really intrigued by the brain, which is technically just a blob of flesh but also, the mastermind behind everything we see today, from simple ancient stone tools to complex modern-day AI computational systems. I mostly enjoy reading fantasy books and watching TV in my free time. I am very passionate about feminism; I love ice cream; I hate bananas; and I can solve the 3x3, 4x4, and 5x5 rubik's cubes 🙂

 

Katalina Peterson

My name is Kat and I recently graduated from Scripps College with a B.A. in Linguistics and Spanish. I am interested in the environmental factors that affect language and cognitive development in children, and have been working on a project with Monica in the LCD lab that explores this topic. I am passionate about the accessibility of academic research to general audiences, so I am excited to work this summer on a blog series that includes participants' perspectives. I look forward to beginning my graduate studies in Speech Language Pathology in Fall 2024.

 

Anika Srivastava

Hello! My name is Anika and I’m a third-year undergraduate at Berkeley pursuing a simultaneous degree in Psychology and Business Administration. I am fascinated by the biological and social processes associated with linguistic and cognitive development, and how these processes interconnect with environmental conditions. I’m excited to contribute to this research sector in the LCD lab and uncover new insights and interventions for adolescent development!

 

Sophia Rodriguez-Bell

Hello there! My name’s Sophie, and I am a rising fourth-year at the University of Chicago, majoring in linguistics and Russian and Eastern European studies. I’m a Berkeley native, so it’s great to come home and work on psycholinguistics! My past experience as a psycholinguistics RA at UChicago focused on verbs of motion, animacy, and noun-adj ordering, so I am excited to try something new here! In my spare time, you can find me knitting a gnome, joking with friends over boba, or reading some Bulgakov.

 

Kosta Boskovic

Hello! My name is Kosta and I am a rising senior cognitive science major at the University of Connecticut. I am interning in the LCD lab this summer because I am passionate about how children learn language and especially the meanings of words, which I research in the Communication and Development Lab at UConn. I’m so excited to experience another lab setting and take part in some of the wonderful projects here. In my free time, I enjoy exploring the outdoors, playing and watching sports, running, and listening to music.