people
members | alumni | collaborators
lab members
Abhilasha Kumar, Ph.D. (she/her)
Principal Investigator | website | CV
Abhilasha is a computational cognitive scientist who is fascinated by how humans learn the meaning of words and communicate with each other. She enjoys teaching statistics, coding, and interdisciplinary classes on AI & cognition. Outside of work, Abhilasha likes to play board games and tennis, and try new recipes and restaurants in Portland!
Channing Hambric, Ph.D. (she/her)
NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Channing is a cognitive psychologist who studies the dynamic interface between semantic memory and language. She is broadly interested in exploring how densely connected and multifaceted semantic representations are selected and evoked through everyday language use. Her recent work has explored the adaptive learning mechanisms thought to shape access to memory and words in different production contexts. Outside of the lab, Channing enjoys baking, reading fantasy novels, and painting.
Amanda Cooney (she/her)
NSF Summer Fellow | Sophomore | Psych-CS major
Amanda is intrigued by the individual and group-level differences that exist in memory search across multiple domains. She is currently working on the Cochlear Project, which investigates the impact of cochlear implants, and therefore different processes of language development, on memory search. Beyond the lab, she enjoys reading, writing, hiking, biking, swimming, and any new adventure with family or friends!
Richard Lim (he/him)
Gibbons Summer Research Fellow | Freshman
Richard is interested in how complex systems emerge from simple parts — how do billions of neurons work together to create an idea, and how can a few mathematical symbols simulate this complex behavior? Currently, he is investigating the relationships between age, individual and collective lexicons, and the structure of their associated semantic networks. Outside of the lab, Richard is active in Residential Life and Quiz Bowl. In his free time, Richard loves cooking, science fiction, and being in nature.
alumni
- Stephanie Chun (she/her; Independent Study | Senior | Neuroscience major)
- worked on co-writing a paper introduction for a PSYC 2740 class project on language processing of state changes
- Kavya Doraswamy (she/her; Independent Study | Junior | Psych-CS major)
- worked on investigating how people attend to different lexical sources during memory search
- Mingi Kang (he/him; NSF Fellow | Sophomore | CS-Math major)
- worked on search-related projects, presenting a poster at CogSci 2024 in Amsterdam!
- Thomas Mazzuchi (he/him; Honors | Senior | Psych-Math major)
- now a research technician at Morality Lab, Boston College
- worked on a project investigating how people select words in communicative contexts
- Ulemj Munkhtur (she/her; Independent Study | Sophomore | CS major)
- worked on investigating how people attend to different lexical sources during memory search
- Jon Sides (he/they; Independent Study | Junior | Psych major)
- conducted and analyzed experiment data based on a PSYC 2740 class project on language processing of state changes
- presented a poster at Psychonomics 2023!
- Simon Thomas(he/they; Research Assistant | Junior | Physics-CS major)
- developed a web interface to analyze helping games
- Reed Warburton (he/him; Independent Study | Senior | Psych-Bio major)
- worked on designing an experiment to investigate clustering and switching behavior
- William Warlick (he/him; NSF Fellow | Senior | CS-Philosophy major)
- worked on designing an experiment to investigate helping behavior
- Nancy Xing (she/her; Research Assistant | Junior | CS major)
- worked on designing forager and models of communication
- Carrie Zou(she/her; Independent Study | Junior | Psych-Econ major)
- worked on designing an experiment to invesigate how helpers perform goal inference during ambiguous situations
collaborators
- David Balota, WashU
- Simon De Deyne, University of Melbourne
- Ketika Garg, University of California, Merced
- Sudheendra Hangal, Stanford & Ashoka
- Robert Hawkins, Princeton
- Michael Jones, Indiana University
- Geoff Maddox, Rhodes College
- Peter Millar, WashU
- David Pisoni, Indiana University
- Michele Scaltritti, University of Padova
- Mark Steyvers, UC Irvine
- Allyson Rosen, Stanford