Team
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.
Principal Investigator Assistant Professor nicolo.cesana-arlotti@yale.edu
Nicolò Cesana-Arlotti, PhD
Catherine Holland
Postdoc catherine.holland@yale.edu
Catherine earned her B.S. in Psychology from Yale in 2016 and completed her Ph.D. at Dartmouth in 2025, working with Jonathan Phillips and Matt van der Meer. Her research focuses on how humans represent and reason about what is possible, a key aspect of planning, decision-making, and social cognition. She takes a building-blocks approach to studying possibility reasoning by treating it as a system composed of distinct cognitive processes (e.g., option generation, executive function, episodic memory, theory-of-mind). Her research spans comparative cognition, neuroscience, and developmental psychology. Outside the lab, Catherine is involved in ornithological research and enjoys rock climbing, traveling, and wildlife photography.
Chiara Saponaro
Visiting Postdoc 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.
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.
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.
Nicole Xu
Graduate Student nicole.xu@yale.edu
Nicole graduated from University of California, Los Angeles in 2025 with a BA degree in Psychology and BS degree in Statistics and Data Science. During her undergraduate years, she worked in multiple labs investigating infants’ and children’s logical reasoning, numerical and spatial cognition, and language acquisition. In graduate school, she is passionate about studying how infants and children develop logical reasoning capacities such as conceptual compositionality, disjunctive inference, and order reversal. She is also interested in studying how children apply these reasoning skills to navigate the social world. Outside of research, she likes bouldering, figure skating, playing ultimate frisbee, and traveling with friends.
Sophie Allen
Graduate Student sophie.allen@yale.edu
Sophie earned a BS in Psychology and Biomathematics from Florida State University, where she conducted research in the Martin Memory Lab under the mentorship of Dr. Chris Martin. She is currently a PhD student in Psychology at Yale, where she works primarily with Dr. Nick Turk-Browne in the Turk-Browne Lab. Her research broadly focuses on the dynamics of long-term memory encoding, storage, and retrieval, with a particular interest in how new experiences impact the structure and content of existing memories. In the IMC Lab, she is working on a project at the intersection of long-term memory updating and logical inference in infants.
Christine Kwon
Lab Manager c.kwon@yale.edu
Christine received her B.S. in Developmental Psychology and Cognitive & Behavioral Neuroscience from UC San Diego, where she worked as a research assistant in several developmental labs studying children's cognitive and language development. She is broadly interested in how children come to learn about the world around them and how they learn so much from so little. Outside the lab, she enjoys road trips with her family and Greek yogurt bowls.
Leilani is a junior at Yale (‘27) pursuing a major in Psychology with a concentration in neuroscience, with a certificate in Education Studies. She finds interest in research of cognition in development within infants and is really interested in the neural correlations of social interactions within brain regions and networks. In her free time she enjoys creative writing, dancing, and traveling.
Leilani Eth
Research Assistant leilani.eth@yale.edu
Grace Pavalko
Research Assistant grace.pavalko@yale.edu
Grace Pavalko is a rising senior at the University of Maryland majoring in Psychology. She is especially interested in cognitive development and hopes to pursue a PhD in psychology to study how children think, learn, and make sense of the world around them. Grace has experience working on research related to language development, child temperament, and trauma-informed care. Outside of academics, she enjoys trying new foods, traveling to new places, and reading mystery novels.
Angela Ryu
Research Assistant angela.ryu@yale.edu
Angela is a junior at Yale (’27) pursuing a double major in Psychology and Linguistics with a certificate in Education Studies. She finds interest in research of language acquisition in infancy. Also, she hopes to research intersections of developmental milestones involving speech delays and adverse experiences. In her free time she enjoys dancing, talking with friends, and trying new flavors of iced drinks.
Ethan Thomas
Research Assistant ethan.thomas@yale.edu
Ethan is a high school senior from Miami, Florida. He is interested in using machine learning to study the interaction between physiology and cognition, such as how cognitive states are reflected through properties of the eyes. Some of his work focuses on leveraging computer vision and artificial intelligence to enhance pupillometry capabilities. In his free time, he enjoys programming games, traveling, and spending time with friends.
Ariella Borah
Research Assistant
ariella.borah@yale.edu
Ariella is a senior at Yeshiva University (’26) majoring in Psychology (Neuroscience concentration) with a minor in Mathematics. She is especially interested in pediatric neuropsychology and in how behavior interacts with brain function, with a focus on cognitive and emotional development in children. She is fascinated by the quantitative side of research, particularly developing creative ways to measure and analyze abstract psychological concepts. Ariella has prior research experience in both cognitive psychology and biochemistry, and is excited to keep exploring the intersections of mind, brain, and development. Outside of academics, she enjoys volunteering in schools, playing music, and engaging with her community.
Lee Dufallo
Research Assistant
lee.dufallo@yale.edu
Lee is a sophomore at Yale College ('28) studying Psychology with an advanced language certificate in Spanish. He is broadly interested in understanding how infants pick up language, logic, and social intelligence so fast, and what factors separate our development from that of other animals. In his free time, Lee plays the cello and enjoys trying new coffee shops.