Graduate Student, Psychological Sciences, School of Social Sciences, Humanities & Arts
Advisors: Prof. Heather Bortfeld and Prof. Kristina Backer
Nancy is a doctoral student in Psychological Sciences, under the mentorship of Dr. Heather Bortfeld. Her co-advisor is Dr. Kristina Backer from Cognitive and Information Sciences. In the 2023-2024 academic year, she was selected as a Faculty Mentor Program Fellow, during which she successfully defended her master’s thesis, entitled “Degree of Bilingualism and a Neural Correlate of Cognitive Control”. This project used electroencephalogram/event-related potentials (EEG/ERPs) to examine the relationship between specific aspects of bilingual language experience and the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive control in young adults.
Broadly, Nancy’s research focuses on bilingual language experiences, neural mechanisms of auditory selective attention, and phonological processing in bilingual young adults (aka Spanish Heritage speakers). She is particularly interested in how language use, switching behaviors, and objective/subjective proficiency modulate neural mechanisms of auditory selective attention in this population. Moreover, she aims to explore the relationship between patterns of language use and phonological encoding in Spanish Heritage speakers, with implications for their literacy outcomes in both Spanish and English.
