Current ELLA members

Director

Dr. Annette M. E. Henderson

Annette joined the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland as a Lecturer in August 2009. She is now proud to be the Director of this thriving research group! [Read More]

Research Fellow

Florian M. Bednarski

I am an interdisciplinary researcher fascinated by infants early learning abilities. How do infants develop agency, what impacts this developmental process and why is it so important for early mental development? – those are the fundamental questions that spark my curiosity. With my research, I am traversing the boundaries between theoretical, conceptual and empirical work in the fields of philosophy and developmental psychology. [Read More]

PhD Students

Jozie Sharpe

Jozie has a background in education and health sciences. Her PhD research investigates how parent self-efficacy affects responsiveness. She is part of the LOOP project based at the Early Learning Lab that uses a hyper-realistic, interactive model infant to better understand how parents respond to infant behaviour.

Wan-Ting Yeh (Tina)

Wan-Ting has a background in cognitive neuroscience and is interested in infant and early childhood development. Her current research aims to understand the dynamic flow of parent-infant interactions and the role of social partners in digital interactive contexts.

Yimei Chuah

Yimei’s research investigates how primary school children’s involvement with school gardens can facilitate their social, psychological, and behavioural wellbeing.

Aastha Puri

Aastha is an external collaborator on our DIME project. Her research interests lay in Theory of Mind development and Social Understanding in early childhood. Her PhD focuses on how parental verbal interactions differ in digital versus face-to-face contexts.

 Masters Student

Stephanie Honeywell

Stephanie has recently moved to NZ to pursue her Masters degree with the Early Learning Lab, where she will be focusing on infants’ development of gender identity through the lens of maternal language.

 Honours Students

Undergraduate Students

Research Assistants

Kristina Wolsey

Kristina has a Master of Arts in Psychology. She has previously worked on the longitudinal cooperation study (that recently wrapped up in 2022) and a second language learning study. Currently, she is running the new ManyBabies4 study, and assisting the Family Resilience and Wellbeing study at the REACH lab.

Tara Carville