Postdoctoral Scientists
Dr. Yvonne Ralph, Postdoctoral Scientist
Dr. Yvonne Ralph earned her Ph.D. in Psychological Sciences and an M.S. in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Dallas. Broadly, her research investigates the role of environment, particularly those related to child gender or socioeconomic status (SES), in the development of language and spatial cognition. During her Ph.D. she used EEG to examine the role of SES on word learning from context in school-aged children. Her thesis project explored the relations between child gender and maternal spatial language use, while her dissertation looked more broadly at children’s self-reported strategies for solving mental rotation problems.
Dr. Ralph's current work at the PLSD lab continues to investigate the development of mental rotation abilities using fMRI and eye-blink conditioning. She is also currently involved with the development of a study that will examine how the availability of toys and interactions that foster spatial thinking may interact with child attention to contribute to child spatial learning outcomes. Her long-term goal is to use her research to help promote STEM involvement and engagement in historically underrepresented groups.
Dr. Yinbo Wu, Postdoctoral Scientist
Dr. Yinbo Wu received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2020. She then completed a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2021, where she studied the neural predictors of speech perception using fNIRS. Her research interests lie in examining the development of executive functions (EFs) in early childhood and how contextual factors such as parenting behaviors are associated with EFs development. Yinbo is passionate about learning and utilizing neuroimaging techniques in her research as well as acquiring advanced statistical data analysis skills. She is currently involved in an NIH R01 Grant funded project that investigates how hippocampal function and structure contribute to individual differences in spatial skills. She is also involved in an EEG study that examines how executive functions are related to mental rotation and a couple other exciting studies. Her long-term goal is to develop effective executive function interventions that could help both typically developing children and children with developmental difficulties such as ADHD children.
