Lakshmi Gogate
Lab Director

lgogate@fgcu.edu

Dr. Gogate received her Ph.D. in 1995 from Rutgers University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the Infant Development Lab at Florida International University.  Prior to her current position as Associate Professor of Psychology at FGCU, she was an Assistant Professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at SUNY Health Science Center in Brooklyn, New York.  Her research in developmental science focuses on the perceptual origins of language development and, specifically, the embodied organism-environment interactions that result in infants’ learning of names for objects and actions.  Her research has been funded by the Thrasher Research Fund, March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation and National Science Foundation. 

 Tamara Santos
Lab Coordinator

tasantos@fgcu.edu

Tamara joined the Infant Development Lab as a research assistant in January 2011.   She became lab coordinator after graduating from FGCU in May 2011 with a B.A. in Psychology.  Tamara is involved in both stimulus creation and coordination of the lab’s many language development investigations.  In the future, Tamara hopes to obtain a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with a concentration in pediatrics. 

Cammie Carpanzano
Research Assistant

ccarpan@eagle.fgcu.edu

Cammie is a fourth year undergraduate student at FGCU, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Biology and Chemistry.  As an aspiring child psychiatrist, she joined the Infant Development Lab in the spring of 2012 to further her understanding of child development and gain valuable research experience.  Currently, she is assisting with data collection and analyses for the synchronous versus asynchronous word-object mapping study.

Brooke Jones
Research Assistant

bmjones@eagle.fgcu.edu

Brooke is a fifth year undergraduate student at FGCU, majoring in Psychology.  For the past several months, she has played an active role in the scoring of infant-caregiver interaction data.  In the future, Brooke hopes to assist in the development and implementation of innovative instructional practices for children and adolescents with learning disorders and, specifically, the design of more effective assessment measures.   

Claudia Lastre
Research Assistant

clastre@eagle.fgcu.edu

Claudia is a fourth year undergraduate student at FGCU, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Interdisciplinary Studies. For the past year, she has been actively involved in many of the Infant Development Lab’s daily operations, from recruitment and scheduling to data collection.  Presently, Claudia has been assisting with the verb-action study, which is aimed at understanding infants’ ability to learn the arbitrary relations between spoken words and actions.  After graduation, she anticipates enrolling in the master’s program in Speech Pathology at Florida International University. 

Alyssa Morelli
Research Assistant

asmorell@eagle.fgcu.edu

Alyssa is a fourth year undergraduate student at FGCU, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Gender Studies. She has been a research assistant in the Infant Development Lab for the past year and is involved in both recruitment and data collection. During the course of her participation in the lab’s various language development studies, Alyssa discovered her interest in Speech Pathology. After graduation, she plans to attend graduate school to earn a master’s degree in this area of study.

Tyler Oberheim
Research Assistant

stoberhe@eagle.fgcu.edu

Tyler is a fourth year undergraduate student at FGCU, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Education.  He has been a research assistant in the Infant Development Lab for the past year and was recently involved in the development and implementation of the synchronous versus asynchronous word-object mapping study.  In the future, Tyler hopes to obtain a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with a concentration in pediatrics.

Elisa Salomoni
Research Assistant

esalomo@eagle.fgcu.edu

Elisa received her B.A. in Psychology from FGCU in December 2011.  She joined the Infant Development Lab in the fall of 2009 and has been actively assisting in data collection and analyses ever since.  Elisa is particularly interested in developmental paradigms, such as habituation and preferential looking, and how best to interpret the results obtained from these measures; this interest arose during the course of her involvement in a recent word learning study funded by March of Dimes.  She plans to continue her research and training in psychological science at the graduate level. 

Melanie Silva
Research Assistant

mesilva@eagle.fgcu.edu

Melanie is a third year undergraduate student at FGCU, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Advertising.  She enthusiastically joined the Infant Development Lab in the fall of 2011 and has been actively involved in many of the labs daily operations, from data analysis to recruitment and scheduling.  Melanie is particularly interested in developmental research methodologies and, specifically, eye tracking technology.  Currently, she is learning how to design and implement infant visual attention studies.