I am a doctoral student in Cognitive and Information Sciences in Dr. Rachel Ryskin’s Language, Interaction, and Cognition Lab. Prior to coming to UC Merced, I worked in a developmental psychology lab on a project exploring cross-situational word learning and multimodal integration for verb learning. Having investigated child language acquisition, I became curious about language acquisition past childhood and how adults integrate new information as they age. My current research interests include aging and language change. Specifically, using electroencephalography (EEG), behavioral studies, and natural language processing methods, I analyze how word meanings and usage patterns change over time, and whether these relate to differences in linguistic performance across the lifespan. My other project, which focuses on population dynamics, aging, and language change, utilizes agent-based models to examine how population turnover impacts diachronic changes in usage patterns, and tests hypotheses about aging and learning rates. In the future, I hope to investigate how language faculties change with healthy aging and compare these trends with individuals with neurodegenerative disorders, in order to assist with disease detection and potentially chart avenues for therapeutic measures.
