Our Research Directions 🧭
Predictive Perception From Birth
We study the infant brain as an active, predictive system rather than a passive receiver of sensory input. Even newborns generate predictions that shape perception, revealing that top-down modulation is foundational to early cognitive development.
Experience-Driven Specialization
Our research treats real-world experience as a causal force. We examine how everyday exposure—such as community diversity and caregiving arrangements—calibrates perceptual systems, shaping what infants attend to and remember.
Emotion as a Learning Signal
We investigate how emotional cues guide learning before language. By studying how facial and vocal emotions influence attention and social engagement, we show that affective information plays a central role in early decision-making.
Dynamic and Contextual Processing
Faces in the real world move and speak. Our work demonstrates that facial motion, physical proximity, and multisensory context fundamentally reorganize perception, challenging static models of face processing across cultures.
From Perception to Social Bias
We examine how early perceptual mechanisms give rise to later social biases. Findings suggest that differences in processing efficiency and representational structure—not explicit instruction—constrain affective learning.
Naturalistic and Translational Methods
We develop open, scalable tools to study development in real-world contexts. From mobile sensing to bedside neuroimaging, our methods aim to make developmental science more precise, inclusive, and ecologically valid.
Supported by our funding partners
