Meet the members of our lab!
Dr. Patricia Bauer
Principal Investigator
Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Psychology
Editor-in-Chief of Psychological Science
The primary work of our laboratory is the study of memory and how it develops from infancy onward. By combining behavioral and electrophysiological (ERP) measures, my colleagues and I are working to understand how the functional changes we observe relate to developments in the basis processes of encoding, consolidation, storage, and retrieval of information from memory; and to neuro-developmental changes that take place in the same period of time. We are especially interested in how children and adults combine or integrate separate yet related episodes of new learning and extend beyond it to actually self-generate new factual knowledge. We pursue these questions in the laboratory and in the classroom, using behavioral methods as well as eye-tracking and ERPs to shed light on the cognitive processes involved in this important means of accumulation of knowledge.
Hilary Miller Goldwater, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
hilary.e.miller@emory.edu
Hilary has been a postdoctoral researcher since June 2018. She completed her doctoral dissertation in psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her dissertation focused on the role that language and visual attention play in the development of children’s spatial skills. She is particularly interested in understanding how children and adults acquire STEM-related skills and knowledge. To investigate these issues, she uses multiple methodologies including eye-tracking, textual analysis, coding of children’s speech and gesture and coding of parent interactions. In the Bauer lab she is working on projects related to how children implicitly integrate and self-derive new knowledge, how the content of story books and parent-child interaction around story books facilitates children’s learning, and how undergraduate students learn from diagrams in STEM courses.
Jessica Dugan Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
jessica.dugan@emory.edu
Jessica graduated from the Honors College at the College of Charleston in 2014 with a Bachelor of Science in psychology and a focus in behavioral neuroscience. She joined the Bauer lab in the fall of 2014. Broadly speaking, she is interested in the development of semantic memory in both humans and nonhuman primates. She is particularly fascinated by generative processes that allow for extension of knowledge and the role that metacognition plays in these processes. She studies these processes in school-aged children and adults using both behavioral and eye-tracking techniques. As a Mechanisms of Learning NRSA Fellow, she collaborates with Dr. Rob Hampton, and through this collaboration she is extending her work on self-generation and metacognition to rhesus monkeys using computerized cognitive testing.
Julia Wilson, M.A.
Doctoral Student
julia.taylor.wilson@emory.edu
Julia graduated from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a concentration in Neuroscience. She joined the Bauer lab as graduate student in August 2018. Julia’s research interests lie in how we build a semantic knowledge base across development. In particular, she is interested in examining how we can facilitate the process of integration of factual information across separate episodes of learning (such as integrating information across lectures in a class) and subsequent self-generation of novel information. She is also interested in studying learning processes that support retention and knowledge change.
Lucy Cronin-Golomb, M.A.
Doctoral Student
lucy.miranda.cronin-golomb@emory.edu
Lucy graduated in 2017 from Tufts University with degrees in Biopsychology and English. As an undergraduate, she worked in the Gabrieli Lab at MIT on several studies aimed at understanding the brain basis of reading and language. She worked as a Lab Coordinator in the Bauer Lab for two years before becoming a graduate student. She is currently working on studies that explore various aspects of self-derivation through memory integration in children and adults.
Katie Lee
Lab Coordinator
katie_lee@emory.edu
Katie graduated from The University of Georgia with degrees in Psychology and Statistics. As an undergraduate she worked as a Research Assistant in the Infant Lab at UGA where she contributed to studies about cognitive processing in infants and adults. After graduation she worked as a Research Assistant in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging and Depression Lab at Georgia State where she discovered her interest in memory. She has been working as a Lab Coordinator in the Bauer Lab since April 2018 where she is currently involved in research about self-derivation of facts through memory integration in children and adults.
Melanie Hanft
Lab Coordinator
mhanft@emory.edu
Melanie graduated from Lehigh University in May of 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. As an undergraduate, she worked in Dr. Hupbach’s Memory Lab where she studied long term effects of directed forgetting as well as reconsolidation in fear learning. She has been a Lab Coordinator in the Bauer Memory Development Lab since July of 2019, and she is currently involved in research about reactivation and child STEM book learning.
Alissa Miller
Lab Coordinator
alissa.miller@emory.edu
Alissa graduated from Emory University with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a minor in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies in May of 2020. She began her time in the Bauer Lab as an undergraduate research assistant during her senior year, working on studies about reactivation and metacognition, and transitioned to the role of Lab Coordinator in June of 2020. She is currently involved in research about child STEM book learning and memory integration over development.