NEUROBIOLOGICAL LAB FOR LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

Huge congratulations to Dr. Juan Quinonez on passing his dissertation defense! 🎉

This milestone reflects years of hard work, resilience, and commitment, and it has been inspiring to see Juan grow into a thoughtful and accomplished scholar. Along the way, he has taken on the challenge of using eye-tracking and EEG to study children’s dyslexia.

So proud to celebrate this moment with you, Dr. Quinonez — you’ve earned it, and this is just the start of an exciting journey ahead.

We’re excited to share that Sean and Kevin attended the 2026 Texas Teaching and Learning Conference (TTLC), themed Teaching and Learning with Integrity!

Sean explored how AI can foster critical thinking skills in high school students using Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) 🤖, while Kevin presented his work on building teamwork and decision-making through high-stakes simulations 🚑. Two fantastic contributions to the conversation on meaningful, integrity-driven learning!

Big congratulations to Dr. Kevin Lawanto for crossing the finish line! 🥳

Kevin’s research brings together virtual reality and emergency medical training to ask a bold question: beyond clinical skills, can VR simulations also train how we think, feel, and work together under pressure? His pilot study explored how high-stakes simulations shape self-regulation, emotion regulation, and team co-regulation — the kind of mental and social skills that truly matter when every second counts. 🧠🎮

🎊 A Round of Applause for Sadie!

Please join us in congratulating Sadie on successfully passing her dissertation defense!

Sadie’s dissertation investigates the cognitive processes underlying vocabulary learning through reading in first and second languages. Using eye tracking, she explored how readers allocate attention during reading and how the emotional content of text affects vocabulary learning and acquisition. Her work reveals that second-language readers face greater cognitive demands that require more frequent word exposure or instructional support, and that emotionally charged text can actually interfere with learning by pulling attention away from meaning — making neutral contexts the most effective for picking up new words.

We are incredibly proud of Sadie and excited to see the impact her research will have on the field! 🧠📖

We are so proud of our lab members who participated in this year’s Student Research Week at Texas A&M University! It was an incredible opportunity to showcase the hard work, creativity, and dedication that our students bring to their research every day.

A special round of applause goes to Shane and Patricia, who took home the Best Poster Award in the Social Sciences and Human Development category! This well-deserved recognition is a testament to the quality and impact of their research. Congratulations, Shane and Patricia — you’ve made the whole lab proud! 🏆

We’re excited to share that Drs. Jenna Schwartz and Qinxin Shi have published a new paper in the journal Reading Psychology entitled “The Association Between Home Learning Environment, Parental Belief, and Children’s Reading Abilities.”

This study shows that parents’ reading behavior strongly predicts their children’s reading proficiency—more than parents’ education level. When children see their parents reading, it positively influences their own reading development through the home learning environment and parental modeling.

Congratulations to Drs. Schwartz and Shi on this excellent contribution to our understanding of early literacy development!

We are thrilled to share that Kevin Lawanto has successfully defended his doctoral dissertation and officially earned his Ph.D!

Kevin’s work is titled “Enhancing Emergency Medical Training through Virtual Reality: A Pilot Study Investigating Self-Regulation, Emotion Regulation, and Team Co-Regulation in High-Stakes Simulation.”

This achievement is a result of Kevin’s dedication and hard work. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Kevin Lawanto on this major milestone!

Exciting news from our Play team! We’re thrilled to announce that their paper, “Disabling fear: Parental risk-tolerance in play for children with disabilities”, has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Play! This is one of the few papers examining risk tolerance in parents of children with disabilities! Congratulations once again to Paige and Matthew for this outstanding achievement!

Abstract: Children with disabilities (CWD) face a heightened risk of mental health challenges, demanding urgent attention. Despite the recognized significance of play for mental well-being, limited research explores the role of play, especially risky play, in CWD. This study investigates parental perspectives on risky play in CWD and its links to child playfulness, parent-child relationships, and problem symptoms. One hundred and five participants, parents of CWD (n=52) and without (n=53), were recruited via Prolific and surveyed on various questionnaires. Findings indicated significant disparities between parents of CWD and without disabilities groups, including group differences in playfulness, problem symptoms, and child-parent relationships and positive associations across all participants and between groups on all measures, emphasizing the interplay of key variables. No significant differences were found in measures of risk tolerance and rough-and-tumble play. Future research should expand these inquiries to various disability categories and consider alternative measures to validate these exploratory findings.

We are thrilled to announce that Sadie Pazoki has received the Outstanding Graduate Student Poster Award at the APA Convention 2024.

Her poster, titled “Understanding Reading Difficulties: Neural Correlates of Reading and Inhibitory Control in Children,” presented groundbreaking research on the relationship between inhibitory control and reading comprehension in children. By using EEG to measure the N2 brain component as a biomarker, Sadie found that children with larger N2 activation during an inhibitory task achieved better reading comprehension scores. These findings underscore the importance of considering neural markers of inhibitory control in developing strategies for reading interventions. Congratulations to Sadie on this well-deserved recognition!