Graduate Students
Current Research Assistants
Office: Psychology Building 2133
Email: amari015@ucr.edu
Ashley Marin is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Developmental area of the Psychology Department at the University of California, Riverside. She first joined the lab as an undergraduate research assistant and earned her B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Education from UCR in 2021. She continued in the lab as a graduate student, earning her M.A. in Developmental Psychology in 2023.
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Ashley’s research explores how children are active participants in their religious social groups. She is particularly interested in how children learn to engage in culturally salient practices, how they categorize themselves and others, and the social and cognitive consequences of these processes. Her current dissertation work examines the process of how U.S. children begin to express themselves as members of religious groups.
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Jiayue Sun is a second-year graduate student in Developmental Psychology. Her research focuses on how children make sense of the world through conversations with their parents, particularly how culturally specific practices and values shape parenting and child development. She holds a B.A. in Psychology and a B.S. in Cognitive Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Office: Psychology Building 2133
Email: jsun168@ucr.edu
Amberley Stein is a first-year graduate student in Developmental Psychology. She completed her B.S. in Clinical Psychology and post-bacc research at the University of California, San Diego studying children's causal reasoning in question asking. As a graduate student, she is interested in how learners navigate and reason about epistemic uncertainty (e.g., by asking questions), and how their social environment and belief formation influence their relationship to their own uncertainty.
Office: Psychology Building 2117
Email: astei030@ucr.edu
Lab Coordinator
Current Research Assistants
Elena Guerrero Galaz is the lab coordinator for the Childhood Cognition Lab. She holds a B.S in Psychology from the University of California, Riverside and worked as a research assistant and leader in the lab during her undergrad. Her research interests revolve around cognitive development, more specifically how children are developing their belief systems, the effect of anthropomorphism in the relationship between children and God, and how children use rituals to understand different events (e.g. death, social movements, illnesses).
Office: Psychology Building 2132
Email: eguer062@ucr.edu
Administrative Staff
Research Administrator
Carole Meyer-Rieth is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles (BA, Psychology) with over twenty years of professional experience in academic administrative support, event planning, graphic design, and project management. As a trustee of a private foundation since 2011, Carole is experienced in grants administration and has an ongoing role in local, national, and global philanthropy as a member of Southern California Grantmakers and the Council on Foundations.
Email: carolem@ucr.edu
Current Research Assistants
Amy Maatouk
Angelle Mercado
Amber Summers
Angel Tang
Casey Min
Danyelle Do
​Vallery Ayala
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Jessica Fu
Jessica Lo Presti​
Natalie Hwang
Rifah Sanjidah
Sage Saludares Kuck
Sakina Poonawalla
Past Research Assistants
Marlen Gonzalez Duran
Preeti Sivakumar
Taylor Martin del Campo
Sarah Panameño
Roger Morales
Alison Garcia
Anthony Zafra
Bryan Hernandez
Elena Guerrero Galaz
Jamison Cortez
Rasneek Singh
Gabriela Morales
Jennifer Hoang
Laura Posada
Emily Fox
Frida Rodriguez Becerra
Karen Lam
Misah Edwards
Jieun Baek
Marce Kikkawa