Team
Principal Investigator Assistant Professor nicolo.cesana-arlotti@yale.edu
Nicolò Cesana-Arlotti, PhD
Nicolò grew up in Milan, Italy, where he completed a BA and MA degrees in Philosophy with Alessandro Zucchi. He earned his Ph.D. from the Center for Brain and Cognition at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, studying Developmental Psychology with Luca L. Bonatti. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Cognitive Science at the Central European University with Ernő Téglás and Ágnes M. Kovács and then in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University with Justin Halberda and Chaz Firestone. When he is not investigating the foundations of logical cognition, he loves cooking for friends, visiting new countries, and summer vacations in Italy.
Zihan Wang
Graduate Student zihan.wang.zw446@yale.edu
Zihan majored in Computer Science and Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University, then worked at Dr. Tomer Ullman’s Computation, Cognition, and Development Lab at Harvard University. Zihan is interested in combining computational and experimental approaches to better understand human learning and communication; for example, what rules are easier or harder to learn, how social inferences are made, and how logical capabilities empower learning. Zihan enjoys cooking, watching shows, and taking photos for friends. Zihan is also a certified Latin dance teacher and judge.
Şeref Esmer
Graduate Student seref.esmer@yale.edu
Şeref grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, where he completed his BA and MA degrees in Psychology at Koç University. Under the supervision of Dr. Tilbe Göksun, he studied language development of preterm and full-term children from infancy to preschool period and completed his MA thesis on the interface between relational language and relational reasoning in preschoolers. Upon completing his MA degree, he moved to Connecticut for his PhD studies at Yale under the supervision of Dr. Nicolò Cesana-Arlotti. His primary research interest in the IMC Lab is how children think about possibilities. In his free time, he enjoys cooking and watching sitcom series.
Nathaniel Braswell
Graduate Student nathaniel.braswell@yale.edu
Nathaniel earned his B.A. in Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the Claremont McKenna and Pomona Colleges, where he worked jointly on projects in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. Previous work includes topics in counterfactual reasoning, unconscious perceptual constancy, and physiological regulation in bilinguals. At Yale, he is interested in the seamless mental interface between visual perception and logical capacities (e.g., disjunctive inference, modal reasoning, and transitivity), studying how these connections arise in humans (through adults and infants) and in nonhuman primates (through wild rhesus macaques). Outside of the lab, Nathaniel enjoys writing, traveling, and drinking coffee.
Chiara Saponaro
Visiting Graduate Student chiara.saponaro@yale.edu
Chiara grew up in Milan, Italy, before moving to Trento, in the Italian Alps, to get her MA in Cognitive Science. She returned to Milan for a PhD in Psychology and Linguistics at the University of Milano-Bicocca. Her work, conducted in the lab of Professor Maria Teresa Guasti within the ERC Synergy Grant “Realizing Leibniz’s Dream: Child Languages as a Mirror of the Mind”, focuses on language acquisition and cognitive development. She is visiting the Infant Mind and Cognition Lab to study the relation between pre-verbal disjunction and the linguistic label “or” in the early stages of development. Outside the lab, she likes hiking, climbing, baking cakes, and eating them with friends.
Mahham Fayyaz
Lab Manager mahham.fayyaz@yale.edu
Mahham received her BA in Psychology from Sarah Lawrence College. There she worked on her thesis with Dr. Kim Ferguson examining the impact of diversity on facial processing in infants. She has previously worked as a coordinator at Columbia University’s Center for Theoretical Neuroscience and as a case manager at the Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers. In her spare time, she enjoys painting and long naps.
Recruitment Coordinator katya.mehta@yale.edu
Katya Mehta
Katya is the Recruitment Coordinator for the Yale Developmental Labs. Born in New Haven, Katya received her B.A. in Theater and Spanish from Oberlin College, and her master’s in Cognitive Science and Language at the University of Barcelona and the Center for Brain and Cognition at Pompeu Fabra University. Prior to joining the Yale Developmental Labs, Katya was a Research Scientist at the Columbia’s Developing Language and Literacy Lab, a librarian and Community Outreach Associate with the New York Public Library, and a classically trained theater actress. Her primary research interests are bilingualism and cognition, early literacy development, and language acquisition, as well as the role of play and its effect on these and other key areas of children’s development.
Molly Atiencia
Research Assistant matienc1@alumni.jh.edu
Molly completed her B.A. in Public Health Studies with a minor in Psychology at Johns Hopkins University, where she worked as an undergraduate research assistant at the Lab for Child Development, focusing on universal linguistic quantifiers. Currently, she is an Intensive Care Coordinator for the CT Integrated Care for Kids Program. She also works as a research assistant in conjunction with Yale’s Center for Injury and Violence Prevention, aiming to learn more about the youth perspective on resilience. Molly’s interests lie in supporting the sociocultural development of children and learning more about what infants know about the world. She loves to paint, travel, and spend time with family.
Fabiha Rafrafin
Research Assistant fabiha.rafrafin@yale.edu
Fabiha grew up in New York City and is currently an undergraduate in the class of 2025 studying Cognitive Science. Her research interests lie in the development of social cognition and how it relates to infants’ logical capabilities. In her free time, Fabiha enjoys reading, listening to podcasts, and spending quality time with her friends.
IMC Lab 6-month Celebration 2023
Ending the year on a sweet note: our last lab meeting blends brainpower with berry power, celebrating research with a strawberry cake.