CURRICULUM VITAE (10 Oct. 2012):

Education

Ph.D., in progress, Brain & Cognitive Sciences (expected 5/2013)

University of Rochester, Rochester, NY

Committee: Richard Aslin*, George Alvarez, Ben Hayden, Robert Jacobs, & Michael Tanenhaus

M.A., Brain & Cognitive Sciences (2011)

University of Rochester, Rochester, NY

*Advisor: Richard Aslin

B.A. Linguistics, with Honors (2007)

University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Advisors: Toben Mintz, Rachel Walker, Elsi Kaiser, & Dani Byrd

B.A. Print Journalism, with Honors (2007)

USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, Los Angeles

Advisor: JaBari Brown

High School Diploma, with Honors (2001)

Metairie Park Country Day School, New Orleans

Fellowships

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. National Science Foundation. 2008 – 2011.

LSA Presidents’ Fellowship. Linguistics Society of America. Summer Institute of Linguistics, Stanford University. 2007.

Provost's Research Fellowship. University of Southern California. 2005 – 2007.

Awards + honors

Computational Modeling Prize (Perception/Action). Cognitive Science Society, 2010.

Robert J. Glushko and Pamela Samuelson Foundation Student Travel Award. Cognitive Science Society. 2010.

NSF Student Travel Award. Cognitive Science Society. 2009.

Dean's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research. College of Letters, Arts, & Sciences, University of Southern California. 2007.

First Place in Social Sciences. USC Undergraduate Research Symposium. University of Southern California. 2007.

Dean's List. College of Letters, Arts, & Sciences, University of Southern California. 2005-2007.

Master Tutor Designation. Princeton Review, Santa Ana, CA. 2003-2007.

Publications

Kidd, C., Piantadosi, S.T., & Aslin, R.N. (Under review.) The Goldilocks effect in infant auditory cognition. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Piantadosi, S.T., Kidd, C., & Aslin, R.N. (Under review.) Rich modeling and data analysis for infant experimentation. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Mintz, T.H., Walker, R.L., Welday, A., & Kidd, C. (Under review.) Infants' universal sensitivity to vowel harmony and their use of vowel harmony as a cue for segmenting speech. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Kidd, C., Palmeri, H., & Aslin, R.N. (In press.) Rational Snacking: Young children’s decision-making on the marshmallow task is moderated by beliefs about environmental reliability. Cognition.

Kidd, C., Piantadosi, S.T., & Aslin, R.N. (2012.) The Goldilocks Effect: Human infants allocate attention to visual sequences that are neither too simple nor too complex. PLoS ONE. 7(5): e36399.

Kidd, C., White, K.S., & Aslin, R.N. (2011.) Learning the Meaning of “Um”: Toddlers’ developing use of speech disfluencies as cues to speakers’ referential intentions. In I. Arnon & E.V. Clark (Eds.), Experience, Variation, and Generalization: Learning a First Language (Trends in Language Acquisition Research). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (pp. 91–106)

Kidd, C., White, K.S., & Aslin, R.N. (2011.) Toddlers use speech disfluencies to predict speakers' referential intentions. Developmental Science, 14(4): 925–934.

McGovern, G.C., Kidd, C., & Piantadosi, S.T. (2010.) Psychology of authority in quid pro quo sexual harassment cases: 50 years of psychological science demonstrate the influence of authority and social norms. Louisiana Advocates (pp. 14-17). Baton Rouge: Louisiana Association for Justice.

Kidd, C., Piantadosi, S.T., & Aslin, R.N. (2010.) The Goldilocks Effect: Infants’ preference for visual stimuli that are neither too predictable nor too surprising. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2476-2481). [Winner of the Computational Modeling Prize (Perception/Action), Cognitive Science Society]

Kidd, C., White, K.S., & Aslin, R.N. (2009.) Children's Use of Disfluencies for Pragmatic Inference in Lexical Development. Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1494-1499).

Conference talks

Kidd, C., Piantadosi, S.T., & Aslin, R.N. (2012.) Infants allocate attention to avoid overly simple and overly surprising word sequences. 2012 Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Piantadosi, S.T., Kidd, C., & Aslin, R.N. (2012.) Rich modeling and data analysis for infant experimentation. 2012 Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Kidd, C. & Aslin, R.N. (2011.) Learning at a Glance: Infants' attention to rapid parental social cues for lexical reference. Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) 2011 Biennial Meeting, Montréal, Quebec.

Kidd, C., Piantadosi, S.T., & Aslin, R.N. (2010.) The Goldilocks Effect: Infants actively seek to maintain a rate of information processing that is "just right". Computer Science Big Picture Talk Series, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.

Kidd, C., Piantadosi, S.T., & Aslin, R.N. (2010.) The Goldilocks Effect: Infants’ preference for visual stimuli that are neither too predictable nor too surprising. CogSci 2010: The Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Portland, OR.

Kidd, C., Piantadosi, S.T., & Aslin, R.N. (2010.) Infants’ Looking Behavior Demonstrates Use of Rational Statistical Inference. 2010 International Conference on Infant Studies, Baltimore, MD.

Kidd, C., White, K.S., & Aslin, R.N. (2009.) Children's Use of Disfluencies for Pragmatic Inference in Language Comprehension. 34th Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA.

Kidd, C., White, K.S., & Aslin, R.N. (2009.) Children’s Use of Disfluencies in First Language Acquisition. 33rd Stanford Child Language Research Forum, Berkeley, CA.

Kidd, C., White, K.S., & Aslin, R.N. (2009.) Children’s Use of Disfluencies in Online Comprehension. 22nd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Davis, CA.

Kidd, C., White, K.S., & Aslin, R.N. (2009.) Children Can Use Disfluencies for Word Learning. 83rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Francisco, CA.

Kidd, C. & Jaeger, T.F. (2008.) Prosodic Phrasing and Function Word Pronunciation. Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

Invited talks

Learning in human infants: The Goldilocks effect. (2011.) Laboratory for Laser Energetics. Science and Technology Seminar (1/28/2011, with Richard Aslin). Rochester, NY.

Children's Use of Pragmatic Cues to Speaker Intention. (2009.) Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Developmental and Comparative Psychology. Leipzig, Germany.

Toddlers' Use of Speech Disfluencies in Online Comprehension. (2009.) Stanford University, Center for Infant Studies. Palo Alto, CA.

Posters

Kidd, C., White, K.S., & Aslin, R.N. (2009.) Children's Use of Disfluencies in Online Comprehension. CogSci 2009: The Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Amsterdam, NL.

Frank, A.F., Kidd, C., Post, M., Van Durme, B., & Jaeger, T.F. (2008.) The Web as a Psycholinguistic Resource. 5th International Workshop on Language Production, Annapolis, MD.

Jaeger, T.F. & Kidd, C. (2008.) Toward a unified model of redundancy avoidance and strategic lengthening. 21st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Chapel Hill, NC.

Kidd-DeFreitas, C. & Welday, A. (2007.) Baby Linguistics: Infants attend to complex vowel patterns to understand speech. Faculty sponsors: Toben Mintz & Rachel Walker. 9th Annual Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Works, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.

Walker, R., Byrd, D., Mpiranya, F., Lee, S., & Kidd-DeFreitas, C. (2006.) The articulation of consonants in Kinyarwanda's sibilant harmony. 4th Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Acoustical Society of Japan, Honolulu, HI.

Kidd-DeFreitas, C. & Ronge, B. Silent Speech Gestures in Kinyarwanda. (2006.) Faculty sponsor: Rachel Walker. 8th Annual Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Works, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.

Casey, L., Kidd-DeFreitas, C. & Lawyer, L. (2005.) Piecing it Apart: Infants Using Vowel Harmony as a Tool for Sentence Parsing. Faculty sponsors: Toben Mintz & Rachel Walker. 7th Annual Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Works, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.

Laboratory experience

Rochester Baby Lab, University of Rochester. Graduate student advised by Richard Aslin. Early language acquisition; word learning; visual and auditory attention; statistical learning; computational models of attention and learning in infants. 2007 – Current.

Human Language Processing (HLP) Lab, University of Rochester. Graduate student working with Florian Jaeger. Corpus analysis; computational models of speech production; regression models of redundancy and reduction in speech. 2007 – 2008.

USC Language Development Lab, University of Southern California (USC). Research assistant to Toben Mintz and Rachel Walker. Infants' phonological development; sensitivity to to vowel harmony cues; speech stream segmentation; infant behavioral methods using the head-turn preference procedure. 2005 – 2007.

Speech Production and Articulation kNowledge (SPAN) Group, USC. Research assistant to Dani Byrd and Shrikanth Narayanan. Speech articulations and phonological processes using real-time MRI video analyses. 2006 – 2007.

USC Phonetics & Phonology Group. Research assistant to Rachel Walker. Consonant articulation (sibilant harmony) in Kinyarwanda; articulatory gestures; long-distance phonological assimilation; EMMA magnetometry. 2005 – 2006.

Additional training

Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) Graduate Summer School in Probabilistic Models of Cognition. UCLA. 2011.

Cognitive Science and Machine Learning Summer School, Pula, Sardinia, Italy. Organized by Pascal2, University College London, Cambridge, Berkeley, Manchester University, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, and MIT. 2010.

Linguistics Society of America (LSA) Summer Institute of Linguistics. Stanford University. 2007.

Coursework in computer science. UC Santa Cruz. 2001-2002.

Logo Programming Summer Camp, Metairie Park Country Day School, New Orleans. Summer 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990.

Teaching

Developed and co-wrote cognitive and neuroscience-focused statistics tutorials and materials for use with Brain & Cognitive Science undergraduate lab courses. Co-created with Ting Quin. Fall 2011 – Spring 2012.

Mentor in Cognitive Science. Empire State College Independent Study Program, Rochester, NY. Fall 2011.

Supervised and provided technical, programming, and analysis instruction for the individual research projects of 8 undergraduate students completing honors theses on developmental topics in the Baby Lab. Fall 2009 - Spring 2011.

Discussion leader for the Aslin-Newport Lab summer research assistant reading group at the University of Rochester. Co-organized with Sarah Davis. Summer 2010, 2011.

Research supervisor for Development and Learning lab course (BCS 205) at the University of Rochester. Taught workshops on R, timecourse analysis, and significance testing. Course taught by Richard N. Aslin. Fall 2009, 2010, 2011.

Teaching assistant for Statistical Analysis and Experimental Design (BCS/PSY 200) at the University of Rochester. Course taught by David Knill. Taught weekly workshops and review sessions. Fall 2008, 2009.

Teaching assistant for Language Development (BCS/LING/PSY 259) at the University of Rochester. Planned and lead weekly supplemental discussion sections to compliment regular lectures; taught guest lecture on early lexical development. Course taught by Ben Faber. Spring 2008.

Children's art workshop leader at Orange County Catholic Worker (Isaiah House), a residential shelter providing emergency food and relief for homeless families in Santa Ana, California. Weekly therapeutic art workshops designed to build confidence for children and their parents. Fall 2006 – 2007.

Academic tutor with School on Wheels, a grassroots non-profit providing tutoring and academic support for homeless children in and around Los Angeles. Weekly academic tutoring sessions for K-8 shelter residents. Spring 2006 – Fall 2007.

Academic and Master SAT tutor for Princeton Review in Orange County, California. Taught math, writing, and college preparation classes for high-school students; provided private tutoring for gifted middle- and high-school students; taught workshops and provided private tutoring for SAT and AP exam preparation. Spring 2003 – Fall 2007.

Creative writing and fine art mentor at Metairie Park Country Day School. Worked twice weekly with 2-4 students in grades 3 through 9 who showed interest and talent in writing and art as they completed independent study courses. Fall 1999 – Spring 2001.

Co-teacher and art workshop leader at the Edisen House Children's Center in Metairie, Louisiana. Supervised play and lead afternoon art workshops for 2- to 4-year-olds during the academic year; designed curriculum to encourage confidence, creativity, and curiosity as co-teacher of the 1- and 2-year-olds during the summer; organized toddler puppeteer troupe. Fall 1998 – Summer 2001.

Supervised students

UNDERGRADUATE + HONORS RESEARCH THESES

Braine, Jillian. (2009). Toddlers use of unfilled-pauses in language comprehension.

Green, Denise. (2011-12). Zipf’s law in American Sign Language (ASL).

Gutman, Jacqueline. (2009). Children’s integration of cues from disfluencies as predictors of lexical novelty and givenness.

Palmeri, Holly. (2010-11). The development of the shape bias in word learning using an eye-tracking method.

Redlinski, Alycia. (2009). Understanding of intentional and unintentional actions in young children.

Snyder, Hillary. (2011-12). The formation of lexical representations in 7-month-old infants.

Ziemnik, Rosemary. (2009). Infants’ understanding of intention in a reaching task: an eye-tracking study.

Zimmermann, Laura. (2009). Infants’ understanding of intentional action.

Zimmermann, Laura. (2010-11). Infant color preferences: an examination of approach and avoidance motivations.

RESEARCH ASSISTANTS

Allyssa Abel, Neha Ahuja, Grace Cannon, Madeleine Chansky, Vivian Choi, Maritza Gomez, Makia Green, Claire Hart, Brittany Hopkins, Mara Hyatt, Christine Keck, Elizabeth Leong, Zi-Rou (Jo-Jo) Liew, Caitlin Lischer, Katheryn Lukens, Holly Palmeri, Eric Partridge, Maddie Pelz, Yaritza Perez, Eftinka Prifti, Emily Roemer, Julia Schmidt, Owen Schochet, Kathryn Schuler, Joyce Shin, Hillary Snyder, Laura Socwell, Emily Sumner, Maggie Thyne, Natalia Wannon, Linda Yu, (Vicky) Can Zhao, Rosemary Ziemnik, Laura Zimmermann

GRADUATED STUDENTS

Hillary Snyder (2009-12). Lab Coordinator, Grieco-Calub and Lew-Williams Lab, Communication Sciences, Northwestern University.

Madeleine Chansky (2010-11) Research Technician, Innerscope, Boston, MA.

Katheryn Lukens (2009-11). Lab Manager, Newport Lab, University of Rochester.

Holly Palmeri (2008-11). Lab Manager, Rochester Baby Lab (Aslin Lab), University of Rochester.

Kathryn Schuler (2010). Graduate Student, Newport Lab, Georgetown University.

Laura Zimmermann (2008-11). Graduate Student, Developmental Psychology, Georgetown University.

Rosemary Ziemnik (2008-10). Lab Coordinator, Spelke Lab, Harvard University.

Service

AD-HOC REVIEWER

Developmental Science

Journal of Child Language

Neural Networks

Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society

Psychological Science

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Association for Psychological Science

Cognitive Development Society

Cognitive Science Society

International Society on Infant Studies

Society for Research in Child Development

Vision Sciences Society