Our Team

Principle Investigator

Dr. Stephanie Denison 

Stephanie is the director of the Developmental Learning Lab. She studies infant and early childhood cognition, mostly as it relates to how children learn and integrate multiple types of information in their inferences. Current topics of interest in the lab include infant probabilistic reasoning, how children attribute preferences to others, the development of heuristics and biases, how children use probability to infer others’ emotions, the cues that infants use to detect agency, and multi-modal ratio abstraction.

Post-Doctoral Researchers

Dr. Elizabeth Lapidow

Liz is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab. She is interested in how learners seek to figure out the world around them by taking actions and considering possibilities. Her research looks at learning and reasoning about causality and how learners make decisions during exploration.

Lab Coordinators

Katie Martin

Katie recently completed a Bachelor of Knowledge Integration degree (Joint Honours Psychology) here at the University of Waterloo. She is now working as a lab coordinator for the Infant and Child Studies Group. She is interested in how children learn language differently than adults and how individuals may use language differently depending on their environment. When not in the lab she is busy spending time playing sports, camping or reading!

Yashika Berry

Yashika is a recent psychology graduate from the University of Waterloo, now working as a research coordinator for the Developmental Learning Lab. She is passionate about clinical developmental research, particularly in exploring how factors such as individual and familial trauma, race, socioeconomic status, and environmental influences shape children's development. Outside of the lab, she enjoys spending time with friends or family, watching movies, and reading!

Graduate Students

Claudia Sehl

Claudia Sehl is a PhD candidate co-supervised by Dr. Stephanie Denison from the Developmental Learning Lab and Dr. Ori Friedman from the Child Cognition Lab. Her research focuses on children's intuitions about economic concepts, like cost-benefit analysis, efficiency, waste aversion, and sunk costs.

Candice Rubie

Candice is a second-year master’s student in the Developmental Learning Lab. Her research looks at how children develop and use the Approximate Number System to estimate quantities, as well as how to give more effective failure feedback.

Ayshe Ozlu

Ayshe is a first year student in the Master of Arts program, pursuing a degree in Developmental Psychology.  She completed her Bachelor's at The University of British Columbia with a double major in Psychology and Film Studies. Her research interests include children's decision-making processes and understanding of social connections. 

Amy Howard

Amy Howard is completing her MASc in Developmental and Communication Science. She is interested in children's judgement, decision making processes and how they perceive others.

Thuvaraka Mahenthiran

Thuvaraka is a first year master’s student in the MA Developmental Psychology program at the University of Waterloo after having graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. She’s currently working on the project that looks at joint attention and parent-child interactions during problem solving task.  

Honours Thesis Students

Sundus Ismaeil

Sundus is in the Life Sciences Honours Psychology program. In the lab she is working on her Honours Thesis, examining how children understand time and knowledge. 

Kirruthikah Vadivel

Kiki is in her 4^th year of Honours Psychology with a minor in Cognitive Science. She is currently working on her honours thesis co-supervised by Dr. Lapidow and Dr. Denison. She is investigating what levels of inconsistency are considered acceptable in the behaviour of functioning objects.

 Noa Morton-Sydorak 

Noa is a 4th year student in Honours Psychology and she has been a research assistant in DLL since 2021. She is currently undertaking her honours thesis supervised by Dr. Denison studying the parent-child dyad and task persistence.

Eunice Ho

Research Assistants/Directed Studies

Kirsten Mendoza

Kirsten is in her 3A term of Honours Psychology and is pursuing a double major in Therapeutic Recreation.

 Avean Ayati Ghaffari

Avean is in her 3A term of her Honours Psychology degree, with a minor in English Language and Literature. She is a research assistant in the lab and is currently supporting Dr. Elizabeth Lapidow