Research

My research asks how children learn from their interactions with the world. Across my work, I investigate how perception, action, attention, and language shape learning in everyday environments. Using naturalistic behavioral data, head-mounted eye tracking, behavioral experiments, and computational approaches, I aim to bridge laboratory theories of learning with the real-world experiences that drive development.

How do children learn to act on the physical world? 

1

The physical environment provides rich opportunities for learning, but children must discover how objects are designed to be used through exploration and experience. My doctoral research examined how perception, motor behavior, social information, and environmental feedback support the acquisition of everyday object use. This work investigated how children learn the designed actions of artifacts such as containers, toys, and tools, revealing how successful action emerges from the interaction of perception, planning, and exploration. 

How do infants learn from everyday experiences? 

2

Everyday environments are dynamic, multimodal, and socially structured. My current research examines how infants allocate attention across natural activities—including parent-child interaction during toy play and book reading,  and routine times like meal preparation,—and how these attentional patterns shape learning opportunities. Rather than viewing infants as passive recipients of information, this work investigates how they actively select and create their own learning experiences. 

How does language emerge from multimodal experience? 

3

Words are learned alongside objects, actions, social partners, and ongoing goals. My research investigates how language learning is supported by the statistical and social structure of everyday interactions, asking how information across vision, action, and speech combines to facilitate learning. By integrating naturalistic observation with computational analyses, I seek to identify the properties of everyday experience that make language acquisition possible.