Our Team

Sammy Floyd, PhD, Principal Investigator I am currently faculty in Psychology at Sarah Lawrence College. Previously, I was an NSF postdoctoral fellow in Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) at MIT, working with Ev Fedorenko and Ted Gibson. I got my PhD in the Psychology department at Princeton University, working with Adele E. Goldberg and Casey Lew-Williams, and my BA at Smith College working with Jill de Villiers. I'm interested in language (especially words), language change and comprehension, and how adults and children learn (especially from a neurodiversity perspective). You can reach me by email!

Avery Yanowitz, Research Assistant Avery is an undergraduate student concentrating in Spanish and creative writing. He is passionate about linguistics, and is very excited to be working with the Language and Development Lab this summer! His studies right now focus on the interplay between phonology and language acquisition, particularly how words pattern across a lexicon. He is excited to see how this research grows and develops over time.

Cora Gilbert, Research Assistant

Cora is an undergraduate student studying psycholinguistics at Sarah Lawrence College. She is interested in exploring the relationship between language and cognition and is currently doing research using continuous flash suppression in order to study language processing.

Meeli Shah, Research Assistant

Hyacinth Perkis, Research Assistant

Adya Sarin, Research Assistant

Adya is an undergraduate student primarily studying Psychology and Creative Writing amongst many other subjects. She is interested in cognitive science and is currently studying perceptual narrowing and non-native phoneme recovery!

Nat Mandel, Research Assistant (+ IDEA Lab)

Nat is an undergraduate student studying developmental psychology and psycholinguistics at Sarah Lawrence, and is also in the child development/social work combined dual degree program. Most of her studies focus on the intersection of play and language development, with an emphasis on atypical expressive language. She is excited to apply her research to her future career as a play therapist!

Alums:

Nicole Imral, Research Assistant (BA, Class of 2027)
Camilla Castrillon, Research Assistant (BA, Class of 2026)
Dan Boyd, Research Assistant (BA, Class of 2026)
Stella Templin, Research Assistant (BA, Class of 2026)
Gracie Hutchinson, Research Assistant (BA, Class of 2025, MS, Class of 2026)
Stella Sommer, Research Assistant (BA, Class of 2025, MSEd, Class of 2026)
Carmen Toribio Martinez, Research Assistant (BA, Class of 2024)