Research Interests and Projects

Learning from prior experience

Complex cognitive behaviors, such as social cognition and language, rely on prior experience but are also adaptable in the face of new information. I study how both proximal and distal prior experience contribute to complex cognition.

Importantly, learning from prior experience enables us to form internal models of our actions, the actions and beliefs of others, and the world around us. These models can be used to predict what is likely to occur in a given context such as what a social partner might think, say, or do. I am interested in how these predictions contribute to strengths and challenges in sociolinguistic behaviors.

The cerebellum for complex cognition

The cerebellum has historically been considered a motor structure. However, a vast majority of the cerebellum is functionally connected to non-motor, cognitive regions of the cerebral cortex. My research has focused on understanding how the cerebellum contributes to social cognition, language, and cognitive control. In particular, the cerebellum is a key structure for adaptive prediction in the sensorimotor domain. My work has provided causal evidence that the cerebellum contributes to adaptive prediction for social cognition and language as well.

Image from D'Mello et al., 2020 Current Biology

Naturalistic approaches to understanding heterogeneity in language processing

Traditional approaches to studying language in the lab may not take into account individual differences in attention, motivation, or interest. How do individual differences in these factors contribute to language processing? I am using personalized neuroimaging techniques to create individual experiments for children with and without autism. These personal experiments have revealed that interest greatly modulates the language network, with relevance for how we think about language in autism.

Whole-brain activation patterns in a 10 year old girl with autism when listening to neutral stories, or stories about trains (her special interest, or affinity)