Principal Investigator & Director


Lisa S. Pearl
[website]

Research Specialists & Postdoctoral Researchers



Graduate Researchers


Noa Attali
Interests: spoken language production and processing, first and second language learning, ambiguity resolution, connections between intonation and meaning
  • NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research 2023: ``Disambiguating Information in Speech and Context''.
  • Concentration exam 2021: "Interpretations of Quantifier-Negation Ambiguity"
Alandi Bates
[website]
Interests: acquisition of syntax and syntactic categories, acquisition of pragmatics, computational modeling
  • Concentration exam 2019: "Pronoun resolution, socioeconomic status, and the impact of input disparities on linguistic developmental outcomes in children".
  • SURP 2016 Fellowship Recipient: "Learning Abstract Linguistic Categories: Formally Measuring Knowledge of "Verb" in a Young Child's Speech"
Niels Dickson
Interests: language acquisition, cognitive constraints on efficient communication, lossy knowledge representation, computational modeling
  • Concentration exam 2022: "The computations underlying the acquisition of syntactic categories"

Junior Research Specialists



Undergraduate Researchers



Interns




Friends and Collaborators


Greg Scontras
UC Irvine, MeaningLab [website]
Jon Sprouse
UConn, SynLab [website]
Richard Futrell
UC Irvine, Language Processing Group [website]
Mark Steyvers
UC Irvine, MaDLab [website]
Sameer Singh
UC Irvine, Computer Science [website]
Sharon Goldwater
University of Edinburgh, Informatics [website]
Joachim Vandekerckhove
UC Irvine, Cognition and Individual Differences Lab [website]
Michael Lee
UC Irvine, MaDLab [website]
Jeff Lidz
UMaryland, Acquisition Lab [website]
Ivano Caponigro
UC San Diego, Linguistics [website]
Dave Barner
UC San Diego, LaDLab [website]
Amy Weinberg
UMaryland, CLIP Lab & CASL [website]
Charles Yang
UPenn, Linguistics & Computer Science [website]

CoLa Lab Alumni


Postdoctoral
Sue Braunwald
Sue Braunwald is a developmental psychologist (Ph.D., UCLA, 1980). She joined the lab in order to participate in an interdisciplinary dialogue about the process of language development. Sue began her career as a parent-diarist and recently contributed a chat version of the diary, The Braunwald-Max Planck corpus to CHILDES. The CHILDES version lacks the detailed information in the original handwritten diary that she is using as a database for her current research in collaboration with Lisa on the productivity of early verbs.

Hannah Forsythe
[website]
After CoLaLab: Data Analayst with the Epidemiology Department of the State of Michigan, in conjunction with a local non-profit Michigan Public Health Institute
Interests: experimental and theoretical approaches to language acquisition, acquisition of pronouns and agreement, gradable semantics, Spanish, Vietnamese


Emma Nguyen
[website]

After CoLaLab: Lecturer (equivalent to US tenured position) of Child Language Acquisition at Newcastle University

Interests: language acquisition, computational modeling, neurolinguistics
  • NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship 2021: "Using quantitative methods to understand the impact of input on development"
  • Dissertation 2021: "The predictive power of lexical semantic features on the acquisition of passive voice in young children" (pdf)
Fabio Paolizzo
[website]
Working with both the University of Rome Tor Vergata (Electronic Engineering) and UC Irvine (Cognitive Sciences & Dance), Fabio runs the Musical-Moods project.


Graduate
Galia Bar-Sever
[website]

After CoLaLab: Teaching Professor at Irvine Valley College + Insight Data Science Fellow; Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Pomona College

Interests: quantitative approaches to language development, syntactic categorization, adjective ordering, ASL, clinical populations
  • Dissertation, 2019: "A Quantitative Framework for Specifying Underlying Representations in Child Language Acquisition" (pdf)
  • Associate Dean Fellowship recipient Fall 2018
  • Dissertation advancement proposal, 2018: "Language Development in Underrepresented Populations: Applying Quantitative Methods to Corpus Data"
  • Pedagogical Fellowship 2017 recipient
  • SURP 2013 Fellowship Recipient: "A Comparison of Signed and Spoken Language: A Look at Grammatical Categorization": presentation, May 2014
  • UROP 2012 Fellowship Recipient: "Understanding the "Less is More" Effect in Language Development: A Look at Word Segmentation": presentation
Lawrence Phillips
[website]

After CoLaLab: A post-doctoral position at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Interests when a graduate student: language acquisition, computational modeling, phonology, speech perception
  • NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention 2011
  • Associate Dean's Fellowship Recipient Fall 2012
  • Department Block Summer Research Award Recipient Summer 2013
  • Department Block Summer Research Award Recipient Summer 2014
  • Jean-Claude Falmagne Research Award Recipient Summer 2014
  • Dissertation Advancement Proposal (2013): "Incorporating Cognitive Realism into Models of Early Language Acquisition"
    (pdf)
  • Dissertation (2015): "The Role of Empirical Evidence in Modeling Speech Segmentation"
    (pdf)
Zachary Rosen
[website]

After CoLaLab: Analytic Linguist for Amazon.

Interests: non-literal language understanding, metaphor, non-symbolic modeling
  • Concentration exam 2021: "Extending Cognitive Models of Metaphor Inference: Integrating Generalizability and Discursive Context Effects"
K.J. Savinelli

Interests: language acquisition, computational modeling, semantics
  • Dissertation advancement proposal, 2018: "The Development of Pragmatic Competence"
  • Associate Dean Fellowship 2018 Recipient
Junior Research Specialists
Megan Aikawa
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Zephyr Detrano
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of metrical phonology
Anousheh Haghighi
CoLa Lab Interests: linguistic cues to authorship
Chloe Haviland
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of grammatical categories, acquisition of verbs
Tim Ho
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of metrical phonology
Kristine Lu
CoLa Lab Interests: linguistic cues to authorship, linguistic cues to mental states
  • Review of the state of the art in affect computing (as of November 2013): presentation
BreAnna Silva
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Arabella Watkins
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of non-literal language, impacts of socioeconomic status
Emily Yang
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Frank Zarrinkelk
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of non-literal language, quantitative approaches to language acquisition


Undergraduate
Shawn Abrahamson
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of signed languages
Lyna Armendariz
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax, social dimensions of language

After CoLaLab: Health educator at AmeriCorp
Joshua Bancroft
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax

Ariana Barcenas
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition in clinical populations
Athenia Barouni
CoLa Lab Interests: linguistic cues to mental states
  • Review of the state of the art in politeness computing (as of November 2013): presentation

Kristen Byer
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Gabrielle Castro
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Noel Covarrubias
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Daniel De Vera
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax, social dimensions of language
Igii Enverga
CoLa Lab Interests: linguistic cues to message tone
  • UROP Researcher of the Month, May 2014
  • SURP 2013 Fellowship Recipient: "Automatic Message Tone Detection Using Improved Linguistic and Machine Learning Methods"
    presentation, Oct 2013 (pdf)
Meredith Fay
CoLa Lab Interests: linguistic cues to deception detection
  • Honors project 2009:
    "Linguistic Cues for Deception Detection in Online Mafia Forums" (pdf)

After CoLaLab: Off to join the Foreign Service

Jon Fero
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax

Alec Finnell
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax

After CoLaLab: Studying abroad at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.

Levon Gevorgyan
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Brennan Gonering
CoLa Lab Interests: linguistic cues to gender identity
After CoLaLab: Doctoral program at UC Davis Linguistics
  • SURP 2016 Fellowship Recipient: "Automatic Detection of Gender Identity in Blog Texts using Stylometric Features"
Julia Hershey
CoLa Lab Interests: automatic evaluation of translations
Doreen Hii
CoLa Lab Interests: sentiment analysis
  • Honors Thesis 2019: "Using Meaning Specificity to Aid Negation Handling in Sentiment Analysis" (pdf)
  • UROP 2018 Honorary Fellowship Recipient: "Strategies for Handling Negation in Text-Based Sentiment Analysis"
Sarah Hunt
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Tricia Ignacio
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of verbs
Alejandro Ibarra
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of verbs
Natashka Jinadasa
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Zeinab Kachakeche
CoLa Lab Interests: quantitative approaches to language acquisition

After CoLaLab: Joining the UCI Language Science PhD program.

Mackenzie Kephart
CoLa Lab Interests: differences in metaphor comprehension in autistic and non-autistic individuals
  • Partnerships in International Research and Education award recipient 2020.
  • Honors Thesis 2021: ``Research Unlocks Doors: Bayesian Cognitive Modeling of Metaphor Comprehension in Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder''. Winner of Social Sciences Outstanding Honors Thesis 2021. (pdf)
Katie Khuu
CoLa Lab Interests: computational models of acquisition

After CoLaLab: A permanent position at Expedia

  • UROP 2015 Fellowship Recipient: "Adding Naturally Derived Utterance Types to a Model of Syntactic Category Acquisition", presentation May 2015 (pdf)
  • UROP Researcher of the Month, May 2015
  • Winner of the EAP Undergraduate Research Award 2015
  • UROP 2016 Fellowship Recipient: "Evaluating Language Learning Strategies by how Useful they are to Children"


Sarah Lazbin
CoLa Lab Interests: linguistic cues to identity, authorship deception
  • Honors Thesis 2018: "The Impact of Message Length and Medium on Imitation Attack Creation and Detection by Humans" (pdf)
    Winner of best Cognitive Science & Psychology honors thesis 2018
  • SURP & UROP 2017 Fellowship Recipient: "The Impact of Text Length and Medium on Imitation Attack Detection by Humans and Machines"
Janice Lee
CoLa Lab Interests: word segmentation in Korean, social dimensions of language
Jessica Lee
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Joanna Lee
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of metrical phonology, acquisition of syntactic islands, cross-linguistic word segmentation
Mona Lee
CoLa Lab Interests: linguistic cues to deception
Rachael Lee
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of pragmatics
  • Honors Thesis 2018: "How adjective ordering preferences develop in children" ( pdf)
  • SURP 2017 Fellowship Recipient: "How Adjective Ordering Preferences Develop in Children"
John Lu
After CoLaLab: A software engineering position at Amazon
CoLa Lab Interests: quantitative approaches to category learning
Tiffany Ng
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax, cross-linguistic word segmentation

After CoLaLab: Masters program in Communicative Disorders at CSU Fullerton

Amanda Nili
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax

After CoLaLab: Doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at Northwestern

  • UROP Researcher of the Month, May 2014
  • UROP 2014 Fellowship Recipient: "The Relationship between Acceptability and Frequency of Syntactic Structures in Child-Directed Speech": presentation, May 2014
  • Frequency of what: How simple is the story of syntax acquisition? (honors thesis: pdf) (UROP journal: pdf)
Uma Patel
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax, social dimensions of language

After CoLaLab: Off to medical school
Spencer Perry
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Sarah Pieper
CoLa Lab Interests: word segmentation in Japanese
  • Honors project 2012:
    "Japanese word segmentation using Bayesian inference" (pdf)
Alissa Powers
CoLa Lab Interests: automatic detection of moods in musical lyrics, crowd-sourcing annotation

After CoLaLab: A permanent position helping program UCI's very own educational environment.

Chen Qin
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of signed languages
Margarita Rodriguez
CoLa Lab Interests: morphosyntactic acquisition + theory of mind

After CoLaLab: Headed to graduate school at UCI's master's in teaching program.

Charles Rodriguez-De Vera
CoLa Lab Interests: computational sociolinguistics of identity and imitation attack detection
Amy Rothermund
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax

After CoLaLab: Off to a job using her writing and organizational skills

Trinity Sanders
CoLa Lab Interests: automatic detection of mood in text
Lucas Lo Ami Alvino Silva
CoLa Lab Interests: linguistic cues to sentiment
  • presentation on sentiment analysis, May 2014 (pdf)
Ashkan Shadi
CoLa Lab Interests: word segmentation, acquisition of verbs, automatic deception detection
Nazanin Sheikhan
CoLa Lab Interests: word segmentation, acquisition of syntax
Morgan Sheldon
CoLa Lab Interests: syntactic acquisition
Nayeem Siddique
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Sunny Singh
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of non-literal language, quantitative approaches to language acquisition

After CoLa Lab: Masters Program in Computational Linguistics at the University of Washington

Courtney Smith
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax

After CoLa Lab: Pursuing a Masters degree

Shannon Stanton
CoLa Lab Interests: human-based computation of language, acquisition of syntax
  • UROP 2011 Fellowship recipient
  • UROP 2011 presentation: pdf
  • Honors project 2011:
    "WordSleuth: Deducing Social Connotations from Syntactic Cues" (pdf)
Brian Toms
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax

Galina Tucker
CoLa Lab Interests: human-based computation of language, acquisition of syntax
  • Honors Thesis presentation: pdf
  • Honors project 2011:
    "How to Get People to Want to Give You Data: Making WordSleuth Fun" (pdf)

After CoLaLab: System Project Engineer at Thales

Jasmine Uitz
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of semantics and pragmatics
After CoLaLab: Post-baccalaureate program in Communicative Disorders at CS Fullerton
Ellen Uyeda
CoLa Lab Interests: signed languages, natural language processing
  • SURP 2018 Fellowship Recipient: "Creating a Machine Readable Dataset of Sign Language Annotation"
Karen Villegas
CoLa Lab Interests: word segmentation, linguistic cues to social information

Nikolai Vogler
CoLa Lab Interests: automatic deception detection & opinion spam

After CoLa Lab: Headed to graduate school at Carnegie Mellon's Language Technology Institute

  • Honors thesis 2017: "Automatic detection of deceptive opinions using automatically identified specific details"
  • NSF Graduate Research Fellowship winner in 2017, for his project "Eliminating Human Bias and Reducing False Convictions with Automatic Multimodal Deception Detection in Real-Time"
  • Member of research team working on "Remote Monitoring of Neurodegeneration through Speech" at the Center for Language and Speech Processing at JHU, 2016
  • SURP 2016 Fellowship Recipient: "Automatic Detection of Deceptive Opinions using Automatically Identified Specific Details"
Caroline Wagenaar
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax, word segmentation, social information in language

After CoLaLab: Teaching English in Hamburg, Germany

Erika Webb
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax
Cort Werner
CoLa Lab Interests: acquisition of syntax, word segmentation

After CoLaLab: Masters Program in Computer Science at the University of Southern California

Jim White
CoLa Lab Interests: cognitive models of word segmentation, syntactic tree generation

After CoLaLab: Masters program in Computational Linguistics at the University of Washington

Alicia Yu
CoLa Lab Interests: cross-linguistic word segmentation
  • Honors project 2014: "Establishing cross-linguistic validity for unsupervised word segmentation models: A look at Italian and Farsi"
    (pdf)
Alan Yuen
CoLa Lab Interests: sentiment analysis, information theoretic approaches to language


Interns
Joseph Lou
After CoLaLab: Princeton University
CoLa Lab Interests: quantitative approaches to syntactic category development
Rachel Obstfeld
CoLa Lab Interests: sign language acquisition
Sebastian Reyes
CoLa Lab Interests: cross-linguistic word segmentation