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Meet the Team!

The CCDL is a group of undergraduate students, graduate students, and a lab manager led by Dr. Deon Benton. 

Deon T. Benton, Ph.D

Principal Investigator

Assistant Professor

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Psychology and Human Development

CV (last updated 07/08/2026)

Graduate Students and Staff

Veronica Hearne

Lab Manager

B.A., 2025, Wesleyan University (Psychology & English)

Veronica graduated from Wesleyan University in May 2025 where she double majored in Psychology and English. During her time at Wesleyan, she was a research assistant in a Cognitive Development Lab where she first discovered her interest in developmental psychology research. She is excited to gain more research experience in her role as lab manager before applying to PhD programs to continue studying children’s reasoning and decision making. Ultimately, Veronica aims to become a psychology professor to share her love for research with undergraduates. Outside of work she enjoys fiber arts, baking, reading and board games.

Becky Beaton

PhD Student

B.S., 2022, University of California, Davis (Cognitive Science & Statistics)

Rebecca (Becky) graduated from UC Davis in Spring of 2022. As an undergraduate, she was a research assistant for the UC Davis Infant Cognition Lab, which sparked her passion for research in developmental psychology. Becky is interested in understanding how children learn to reason about cause and effect, the role explanation plays in children’s cognitive reasoning, and how this varies between children with and without autism. She uses both behavioral experiments and computational modeling in her research projects!

Tai Liu

PhD Student

B.S., 2025, University of California, San Diego 

Tairan (Tai) graduated from UC San Diego in Spring of 2025 with a degree in Cognitive Science Machine Learning. As an undergraduate, she worked in both the Cognitive Development Lab of Gedeon Deák and Entrepreneurial Lab of IGE, where she gained experience engineering infant social interactions tools and developing ER tools with EEG integration for patients with stroke. Her research interests center on statistical learning and how that relates to numerical abilities. 

Undergraduate Students

Alyssa Valentine

Emma Heitzman

Sena Xiong

Class of 2029

Class of 2029

Class of 2028

Elementary Education & Cognitive Studies Major

Child Development & Cognitive Studies Major

Human and Organizational Development Major

Lilly Cope

Hanamariam Yehuala

David Oh

Class of 2028

Class of 2029

Class of 2029

Child Development & Medicine, Heath and Society Major

Cognitive Studies & Medicine, Health and Society Major

Cognitive Studies & Psychology Major

Anya Orlova

Brady Mitchell

Brianna Mariscal

Class of 2029 

Class of 2029 

Class of 2029 

Chemical Engineering Major

Neuroscience & Psychology Major

Child Development and Neuroscience Major

Nawroz Youssef

Class of 2029

Medicine, Health & Society Major

Past CCDL Members

Xiaoya (Mia) Chen

Taehoon Kim

Yinghan Du

Osiria Li

Simone Longenecker

Shelby Williams

Chris Tseng

Jordyn Jacobs

Maria Peltomaki

Lily Hofstetter

Anaya Baptiste

Abigaile Spooner

Sonia Singh

Rachael Arnold

Lamiya Adri

Jason Lin

Melany Morgan

Nicole Talledo

McKay Lucas

Sarah Sun

Courtney Cagnolatti

Rachael Fitzgerald

Calista Pointer

Fedora Ogodo

Selim Yigit

Spencer Bowden

Ka Ian Sam

Past CCDL Highschoolers

Simone Longenecker
2023

Abigail Gider
2025

Katie Fei
2025

Kevin Li
2025

Tanvi Vangala
2025

Victor Wantanabe
2025

Tina Manoj
2026

Vyana Rochlani
2026

Philip Choi
2026

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