I’m a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennylvania. I work with John Trueswell and Lila Gleitman. Before coming to Penn, I did my PhD with T. Florian Jaeger and Lissa Newport at the University of Rochester, which was a lot of fun.

I’m currently involved in two lines of research exploring how language use influences the way adults and children learn language. One line of my work focuses on the question of whether natural language structures may be shaped by learning biases that stem from considerations about processing and communicative efficiency. To address this question I design laboratory studies in which I expose learners to miniature artificial languages. Recently, I have begun to explore the developmental timeline of communicative biases in the speech of young children. I’m particularly interested in whether young children use linguistic devices available to them to facilitate efficient communication.

When I’m not in the lab, I’m probably playing euro boardgames or hanging out with my cats Flugit and George-Euclid.

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