People

Gabriela Rojo, or  Gaby or Rojo was born in Inglewood, California (near LA), but raised in St. Louis. She is a second-year undergraduate student majoring in PNP on the Language Cognition and Culture track and am minoring in Speech and Hearing. She is a first-generation student and bilingual. She has always been fascinated with language and  reading. She tutors students at a local elementary school to help them with their reading and writing skills. Her favorite hobbies include crocheting and reading. 

Originally from the Chicago suburbs, Haniah is an undergraduate student majoring in Psychological and Brain Sciences, with a minor in Marketing. Her younger brother’s time in school made her interested in learning more about language development in children. She enjoys watching hockey and reading.

Lissa is a Brazilian Ph.D. Student from the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPEL). She graduated with an M.A. in Linguistics and a bachelor’s in Education (Elementary Teaching License) also from UFPEL. In Brazil, she works at GEALE lab under the supervision of Professor Ana Ruth Miranda, where she has been studying the relations between phonology and orthography since 2014, with a special look on the spelling of Brazilian Portuguese’s complex syllables by Elementary School children. She is currently working as a Visiting Researcher at the Reading and Language Lab, with support from CAPES (grant no. 88881.933716/2024-01). Outside research, she loves practicing sports, having good and meaningful conversations with people, and reading a book accompanied by chimarrão, a very typical tea from her home state Rio Grande do Sul.

Veronica is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Psychology and Environmental Studies on the pre-med track. She’s from North Carolina, but her parents immigrated to the United States from Ukraine and Russia. Her bilingual upbringing inspired her to learn more about linguistics. She enjoy learning new languages, and her other hobbies include cooking, baking, and being outdoors.

Brett is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychology. Currently he is acting as a Senior Research Scientist working on the acquisition of writing and reading in the lab. This work is supported by the NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development as project 5R01HD102346-03, “Learning statistical orthographic patterns in disyllabic English words and using them in reading and spelling.”  He is interested in computational and statistical approaches to language, particularly in the fields of phonology, historical linguistics, and the lexicon. His PhD dissertation in the Stanford Department of Linguistics explored how to statistically test the historical connections between languages. A few more specifics in his CV.

Kayla is a third-year graduate student from Sahuarita, Arizona. She graduated with a bachelor’s in Psychological and Brain Sciences with minors in Linguistics and French from WashU in 2021. Her masters investigated linguistic factors that influence lexical stress, and she is currently looking at morphology and multisyllabic words. When she is not in the lab, she is cuddling her cat, Friday, hosting game nights with her friends, reading, or learning to book bind.

Lydia, originally from Joplin, Missouri, completed her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and minor in Diversity at the University of Washington in Seattle and recently graduated from Boston University with her master’s degree in Psychology. She is interested in how early life environmental factors, particularly during the perinatal period, shape developmental outcomes. Outside of the lab, she enjoys exploring new cities, camping, and spending time with her husband, Lucas, along with their dog, Mango, and kittens, Fern and Forest.