| Ashley came to the Infant Cognition Lab at
UT in August of 2005 when she began her graduate studies in
the Cognition and Perception program. She is originally from
Mobile, AL, where she attended Mobile Christian School. She
received her B.A. in Psychology from Auburn
University in May of 2005, graduating cum laude and as a
University Honors Scholar. While at Auburn, Ashley did research
on language development in preschool children as a function
of word class and phonotactic probability. This research was
done under the direction of Dr.
Elaina Frieda.
The Infant Cognition Lab has recently been collaborating with
Dr.
Eugenia Costa-Giomi, Associate Professor of Music and Human
Learning, to research infant music perception. Ashley is currently
working on a series of studies investigating how 7- and 11-month-old
infants process musical timbre (different musical instruments)
and melodies. This research is attempting to draw parallels
between speech processing and music processing in infants. In
addition, she is planning a study that investigates whether
infants exhibit spatial verticality (associating higher pitches
with higher vertical space, and lower pitches with lower vertical
space) when they hear ascending and descending musical scales
and arpeggios.
Ashley also recently finished running a study that examined
how conceptual information guides language and category learning
in 18-month-olds. This study utilized custom-made animated videos
to explore whether the animate/inanimate distinction influences
infants' formation of novel artificial categories, and whether
having a label for the object aids categorization. Her general
research interests include conceptual and language development,
information processing, categorization, and cognitive neuroscience.
Ashley is a member of the American
Psychological Association, the International
Society for Infant Studies, the Association
for the Psychological Sciences, and the Society
for Research in Child Development. In her spare time, she
enjoys traveling, horseback riding, tennis, dance aerobics,
photography, and Auburn and Texas football.
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