Center for Research in Child Development
Loyola University Chicago
2025-2026
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​The Movement & Learning Lab had a great time at our second annual Fall Gathering at Dr. Wakefield's house. Current lab members got to spend time getting to know lab alumni who are still in the Chicago area.
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​The Cognitive Development Lab is excited to welcome new graduate student, Natalie Turner! Natalie is one of three incoming first year students in the Developmental Psychology PhD program at Loyola!
2024-2025
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Dr. Guy welcomed another cohort of CAS Undergraduate Research Experience students this summer. With the mentorship of Dr. Guy and graduate student Cidnee Hall, Milena Lamparska, Sonya Ricaurte, Emily Sarmiento, Emily Schwarz, Ella Torno had a productive summer lab experience! ​​
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​​Lots of seniors to bid farewell to this year! Congrats to Owen Caldwell, Levi Cento, Amardeep Kaur, Safa Khatoon, Maya Martin, and Emily Pawelko from the Cognitive Development Lab and Maddie Bowers, Clark Brown, Leah Curtis and Lucy Maloni from the Movement & Learning Lab!
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It's always exciting to see undergraduate research assistants complete their own thesis projects. This year we had four students complete the Psychology Honors Thesis course sequence - Owen Caldwell, Leah Curtis, Maya Martin, and Eman Rana. Maddie Bowers also completed a semester-long thesis while preparing her senior piano recital for her music major.
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No rest for developmental psychologists at the end of the semester - nine presentations were given by CRCD members at the biannual Society for Research in Child Development conference in Minneapolis, and the Developmental Psychology program and alumni enjoyed desserts together to celebrate the end of the academic year.
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Another successful year for students receiving competitive awards from the Loyola Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program! Six of our students will be supported to do independent projects during the 2025-2026 year. Congrats to Sam Fritsch (Provost Fellowship), Esohe Igbinovia (Mulcahy Scholar), Eman Rana (Mulcahy Scholar), Lisa Gallo (Mulcahy Scholar), Alex Hurka (Mulcahy Scholar) and Esha Thakkar (Mulcahy Scholar)!
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April was a busy month! We had many CRCD students present at the Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium and Dr. Wakefield traveled to Kalamazoo to give a keynote at the Michigan Undergraduate Psychology Research Conference where she connected with some of HER undergraduate mentors.
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Congrats to Cidnee Hall from the Cognitive Development Lab on successfully defending her MA thesis titled, "Early social experience and biased attention to threat-related emotion in infancy"!
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The Movement & Learning Lab had our first (annual?) fall party at Dr. Wakefield's house. It was exciting to have lab alumni and current members all in the same place for tasty food and conversation!​
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Welcome to Katie Mathias who joined Dr. Wakefield's lab as a first year graduate student in the Developmental Psychology PhD program. Dr. Guy will be recruiting a student to start next year!
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CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. Asli Bursalıoğlu who successfully defended her dissertation "The Impact of Intersensory Redundancy on Face Processing in 12-Month-Old Infants: An Investigation Using Behavioral Methods and ERPs" in August! Asli is Dr. Guy's first graduate student to earn her PhD and she will be starting a post doc at Northwestern University!
2023-2024
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Congratulations to Dr. Maggie Guy who officially earned tenure at Loyola and became an Associate Professor in July!!!
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The Cognitive Development Lab had a busy beginning to the summer! Dr. Guy mentored three students through the CAS Undergraduate Research Experience Program: Isabella Conley, Rachel Kinsella, Abigail Pedersen!
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​Huge congrats to the seniors graduating from CRCD labs this year! We said see you later (but not goodbye!) to Aashi Patel, Chloe Michel and Megan Weiss from the Movement & Learning lab and Rachel Barbanente, Grace Ellerbeck, Milosz Krzewinski, Marcus Piatonni, Priscilla Ruiz from the Cognitive Development Lab.​​
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Congrats to CRCD members who received competitive scholarships from Loyola for the 2024-25 academic year: Leah Curtis (Mulcahy Scholar), Lisa Gallo (Mulcahy Scholar), Owen Caldwell (Provost Fellowship), Maya Martin (Provost Fellowship) and Emily Pawelko (Provost Fellowship).
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In April, CRCD members presented at the annual Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium. It was a great opportunity to share the work they did this year!
2022-2023
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​Once again, we are sad to see our seniors go, but SO excited for what they will do next. Congrats to Kristina Humphrey, Connor Karwowski and Sierra Webber from the Movement & Learning Lab and members from the Cognitive Development Lab!
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Congrats to Dr. Wakefield who was this year's recipient of the St. Ignatius Loyola Award for Excellence in Teaching. Read more about the award here.
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The Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium was finally back in person this year! Our students had a fun time presenting their work to many friends, family, and faculty members!
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Drs. Guy and Wakefield and graduate students Asli Bursalioglu, Cidnee Hall and Eleanor Bessner traveled to Salt Lake City to present work at the Society of Research in Child Development Bi-Annual conference in March.
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Students from the CRCD won competitive fellowships to pursue independent projects during the 2023-24 school year! Congrats to Lisa Gallo, Jen Kavina, Milosz Krzewinski, Chloe Michel and Priscilla Ruiz!
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2021-2022
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Alumni Erin Foy, Emma Tumminaro and Natalia Zielinski from the Movement & Learning Lab presented work at the International Society for Gesture Studies conference this summer in Chicago! Everyone did a great job!
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CONGRATS TO DOCTOR KATIE GUARINO! Dr. Wakefield was thrilled to hood her first Ph.D. student in May after a very successful dissertation defense in January.
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​Congrats to graduating seniors Emma Tumminaro, Mary Nagai and Agna Patel from the Movement & Learning Lab and members from the Cognitive Development Lab!
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We are excited for another round of LUROP support for CRCD projects. Next year Trinity Bauer, Nhi Dung, and Kristina Humphrey will be conduct independent project supported by fellowships from Loyola!
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2020-2021
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Congrats to our amazing seniors -- Laura Bottei, Erin Foy, Dylan Nelson, Kiril Nikolovski, Tori Roberts, and Natalia Zielinski from the Movement & Learning Lab and Aleena Ferozuddin, Katya Aguilar, Rebecca DePiero, and Aleksandra Kostic from the Child Development Lab -- who graduated this June and are going on to be PhD, MA, and medical students, research assistants, and many other exciting jobs next year! We wish you the best of luck!
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Students from the CRCD won competitive fellowships to pursue independent projects again this year! Congrats to Trinity Bauer, Mary Clare Nagai, Agna Patel and Sam Spain!
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Natalia Zielinski published her honors thesis work as a Cognitive Science Proceedings paper! Natalia will present at the upcoming meeting of Cognitive Science!
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Studies for the Cognitive Development Lab are online and on demand! Check out the Lookit site to learn more!
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Congrats to senior, Natalia Zielinski, from the Movement & Learning Lab! Natalia was awarded a Psi Chi Research Award for work she will present this spring at the Midwestern Psychological Association virtual conference.
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The pandemic has forced the CRCD to get creative! Graduate student, Asli Bursalioglu and senior Aleena Ferozuddin have been hard at work getting studies for infants up and running online for the Child Development Lab! Erin Foy, and Tori Roberts, seniors from the Movement & Learning Lab have also transitioned their honors thesis projects online, and Natalia Zielinski has come up with a creative way to do an eye tracking study following social-distancing guidelines!
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Work from the Movement & Learning Lab has recently been published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology! We show that older children who see gesture as meaningful think that person who uses gesture when they talk will be a better person to learn from than someone who does not.
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Graduate student, Katie Guarino from the Movement & Learning Lab was awarded a fellowship from her undergraduate alma mater to fund her dissertation work! She expects to defend her dissertation this spring​
2019-2020
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Graduate student, Asli Bursalioglu from the Cognitive Development lab successfully proposed her Master's Thesis. Asli will be doing exciting work on face processing in infancy, using both behavioral and EEG measures. We can't wait to see your results, Asli!
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Congrats to graduating seniors, Allison Haussler, Mady Jurcev, and Mariana Sosa from the Movement & Learning Lab and Sabina Hajdarovic, Diana Mahlis, and Liz Wolfgram from the Cognitive Development Lab! We will miss you!
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Despite the set back to our research due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have great news for moving forward with research during the next academic year! Congrats to Loyola Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program Fellowship recipients, Aleena Ferozuddin, Erin Foy, Tori Roberts, and Natalia Zielinski!
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Our seniors are being honored for their research! ​
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Congrats to Mady Jurcev, who was awarded an Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher award. Mady has worked in the Movement & Learning Lab since the summer after her first year. She has completed two independent projects and earned honors on her senior thesis.
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Congrats to Diana Mahlis who was awarded the Outstanding Neuroscience Undergraduate Award. Diana has been worked in the Cognitive Development Lab since her sophomore year and recently completed her honors thesis with Dr. Guy!
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Dr. Wakefield was awarded the Langerbeck Faculty Research Mentorship Award, recognizing her commitment to creating meaningful research experiences for undergraduates!
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Dr. Guy published research on the neural bases of infant face processing in the journal NeuroImage with collaborators from the University of South Carolina!
2018-2019
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April was a great month for the Movement and Learning Lab! Katie Guarino successfully defended her Master's Thesis, Mady Jurcev and Demi Agaiby presented great posters about their independent research projects at Loyola's Weekend of Excellence, and Katie and Dr. Wakefield had a conference proceedings paper accepted to Cognitive Science Society, with collaborators from Loyola and UC Irvine!​
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Congrats to Katie Guarino, who was accepted to present a talk at the upcoming meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development!
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Congrats to Asli Bursalioglu, who gave a talk at the annual meeting of the European Federation of Psychology Students' Association!
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Congrats to Mady Jurcev, who is pursuing an independent project with funding from Loyola!​
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Dr. Wakefield published new research in the journal Developmental Psychology with collaborators from the University of Chicago!
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Dr. Guy published new research examining neural responses to faces in infants at high risk for autism in the journal Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience with collaborators from the University of South Carolina!
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We warmly welcome Asli Bursalioglu, as the newest graduate student in the CRCD and Cognitive Development Lab!
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2017-2018
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Congrats to Katie Guarino, who presented research on how children with and without prior knowledge allocate visual attention during math instruction at the Cognitive Development Society Meeting!
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Dr. Wakefield published new research in the journal Developmental Science with collaborators from the University of Chicago and Indiana University!
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Dr. Guy published new research examining infant processing of visual symmetry in the journal Developmental Psychobiology with collaborators from the University of Tennessee, University of East Anglia, and University of Louisville!
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2016-2017
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Congrats to Natalie Schomas and Sarah Heimberg! Both Natalie and Sarah are undergraduate research assistants who won Mulcahy Research Fellowship awards for the 2017-2018 academic year, and Natalie also won the Provost Fellowship award for summer research!
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Dr. Wakefield published new research in the journal Child Development with collaborators from the University of Chicago!
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