Hannah Lunkenheimer

I am a cross-cultural researcher studying children’s understanding and explanatory reasoning regarding significant misfortune (e.g., death, illness, natural disasters). My research focuses on using cognitive, social, and evolutionary theories to explain how beliefs and rituals are cross-culturally recurrent and how those beliefs and rituals impact grief, coping, and psychological well-being over the lifespan.

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James Daly

I am interested in learning and motivation in children and adults. My current research focuses on intrinsic motivation to pursue future learning activities based on past experience. My previous work includes research on temporal cognition, memory integration, bilingualism, conceptual development and generic language.

Susan Kruglinski

I am a mid-career student with experience in science journalism and mental healthcare studying the influence of social media on child development, with a focus on social contagion, magical thinking, unusual niche cultures, and young people’s susceptibility to maladaptive conformity. I am interested in how these issues are novel in the digital age, as well as how they relate to what is already known about the psychological development of children, adolescents, and young adults.

Taryn Crone

I am a first-year graduate student and my research has focused on the different domains of creativity, how they develop in young children, and what benefits they have. My research interests also include determining how children differentiate between fantasy and reality, specifically through their beliefs in luck and superstitions, and how those beliefs can affect their day-to-day lives.

Maya Vemulapalli

I am a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, where I earned a Bachelor of Science and Arts in Neuroscience with a minor in Psychology. My research interests include early socio-emotional development, caregiver-child relationships, identity formation, self-regulation, and neurodevelopmental correlates of experience and behavior.