Dr. Lauren Slone
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Before joining the Âé¶¹´«Ã½¹ÙÍø faculty in 2020, Dr. Lauren K. Slone was a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University. Her research examines how children learn so much, so fast, in their first years of life. Specifically, she and her students use methods like tracking a child’s gaze as they interact with a parent or play with toys to understand what the world looks and sounds like from a child’s perspective and how children learn from these unique experiences. Her teaching responsibilities include Developmental Psychology and Research Methods.
Areas of Expertise
Lauren specializes in eye-tracking research with young children and their parents, including both remote eye-tracking (e.g., tracking where a child looks on a computer screen) and head-mounted eye-tracking (e.g., tracking where a baby looks as they play with toys and move around their environment). These methods yield high-density data that help us understand both the learning problems faced by young children (e.g., just how ambiguous is it from the infants’ perspective what the label “dog� refers to?), and how the statistical structure of their early visual and auditory environments help children learn about words, objects and people.
Education
- Postdoctoral Fellow, psychology, Indiana University, 2020
- Ph.D., psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, 2015
- M.A., psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, 2011
- B.S., biological sciences and psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, 2009
Honors, Grants & Awards
- NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship (F32) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), 2017–2018
- Provost’s Travel Award for Women in Science from Indiana University in 2016, 2017 and 2019
- Young Scientist Travel Award from Indiana University’s Cognitive Science Program and the National Science Foundation (NSF), 2016
- Millard Madsen Dissertation Award for Developmental Students from UCLA, 2015
- Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF), 2012–2015
- Graduate Summer Research Fellowship, UCLA, 2011
- Jacob K. Javits Graduate Research Fellowship, 2010–2012
- Graduate Research Mentorship Fellowship, UCLA, 2010
- Senior Honors Thesis Grant, Carnegie Mellon University, 2009
- Small Undergraduate Research Grant, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008 and 2009
Selected Publications:
- “,� with L.B. Smith & C. Yu, Developmental Science, e12816, 2019
- “,� with D.H. Abney, J.I. Borjon, C. Chen, J.M. Franchak, D. Pearcy, C. Suarez-Rivera, T.L. Xu, Y. Zhang, L.B. Smith, and C. Yu, Journal of Visualized Experiments, 141, e58496, 2018
- “,� with S.P. Johnson, Cognition, 178, 92-102, 2018
- “,� with D.S. Moore and S.P. Johnson, PLoS ONE, 13(8), e0200468, 2018
- “� with L.B. Smith, Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 2124, 2017
- “,� with C.M. Sandhofer, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 159, 34-49, 2017
- “,� with S.P. Johnson, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 133, 47-56, 2015
- “,� with H. Vlach, and S.P. Johnson, Frontiers in Language Sciences, 3, 598, 2013
- “� with D.H. Rakison, Developmental Science, 15, 43-53, 2012
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Outside the College
When she’s not teaching, writing or conducting research with students, Lauren can be found spending time with her husband, Jeff, and her 2-year-old daughter, Savannah. Lauren enjoys hiking, dancing, soaking up the summer sun and thrift shopping.