I am a postdoc at Dr. Tania Lombrozo's Concepts and Cognition Lab 
at Princeton University.

I study explanation, causal reasoning and categorical representation in adults and across development. I approach explanation both as a process and a product: I investigate cognitive consequences of engaging in explanation (process) and of producing different types of explanation, such as categorical, causal-mechanistic, teleological and structural, of different levels of complexity (product).

The central line of my research examines how people reason about agents embedded in complex social structures that constrain or facilitate agents’ behaviors, depending on their position within the structure. I study how reasoning about social structures develops, how different cognitive mechanisms contribute to it, what behavioral consequences it has, and how language both shapes and reflects it.

My research on causal reasoning and structural explanation examines how acknowledging instability, or lack of robustness of causal and categorical relationships across background circumstances affects learning, inductive inference, language, and decision-making.

I spend part of my time at UC Berkeley where I am running collaborative developmental projects with Dr. Alison Gopnik (Cognitive Development Lab) and Dr. Mahesh Srinivasan (Language and Cognitive Development Lab). In one of these projects, I examine consequences of engaging in structural explanation for reasoning about socioeconomic inequality.

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