My research interests focus on understanding cognitive and computational mechanisms that support learning in infants, children and adults. I take a systems view of human development and learning as it emerges from the interdependence and integration of perceptual, attention, motor, cognitive, language and social processes. Therefore, the heart of understanding human learning lies in understanding the organization of the interactions between these component systems gives rise to learning outcomes. To examine the dynamics of real-time developmental processes at the micro-level, I use head-mounted eye tracking, computational modeling and data mining and visualization techniques to analyze high-density multimodal behavioral data with the goal to understand mechanisms of language learning, statistical learning, selective attention, perception-action coupling, and social interaction. I believe that research on human development and learning is critical in that it not only generates new scientific findings to advance our understanding of human cognitive systems, but also provides fundamental and guiding principles that can be applied to the real world to improve human learning and to build artificial intelligence systems.
