About
I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology (Cognitive and Neural Sciences) at the University of South Carolina. My advisor is Dr. Amit Almor.
I study how people understand language and what the brain does while they do it. My dissertation asks how listeners keep track of where a voice came from while they follow what it says. I also work on how people resolve references in a conversation, on aphasia and the brain regions that support naming, and, most recently, on whether people and AI monitors can follow a conversation between two AI agents.
I teach as much as I do research. Since 2023 I have been the instructor of record for seven course sections at USC: composition, psychological statistics, learning and memory, and the cognitive psychology lab, with introductory neuroscience next. For my statistics students I wrote the StatTeacher Toolkit, a free web app that makes practice problems and checks the answers.
I hold an M.A. in Linguistics (Psycholinguistics) and a B.S. in Psychology, magna cum laude, both from USC. I speak French and have a side interest in how bilinguals process language.
Teaching
Students learn statistics by doing statistics, so my courses are built around practice. Students collect their own data, make a prediction, and test it. The StatTeacher Toolkit came out of PSYC 220. Instructors use it to generate datasets and problem sets; students use it to practice, get graded on the spot, and see the full worked solution. In 2023 the University of South Carolina gave me a "Thank a Teacher" certificate.
- PSYC 455: Introduction to Neuroscience Instructor of record
- PSYC 572 / LING 505: Cognitive Psychology Lab Instructor of record
- PSYC 400: Survey of Learning & Memory Instructor of record
- PSYC 220: Psychological Statistics Instructor of record, two semesters
- ENGL 101 & 102: Critical Reading, Rhetoric and Composition Instructor of record, three sections
- PSYC 405, 506, 572 and LING 301 Teaching assistant and guest lecturer: Cognitive Psychology, Psychology of Language, Cognitive Psychology Lab, The English Language
Research Interests
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Neuroscience of Language
- Language & Spatial Cognition
- Linguistic Reference Processing
- Language & Discourse
- Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism
- AI Oversight & Multi-Agent Communication