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

Dr. 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.

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.

Alesha Lamont

Alesha is pursuing her Master’s degree with the Early Learning Lab. Alesha’s project utilises an eye-tracking design to understand the development of visual attention in infants, in hope to gain a greater understanding of an ability that is believed to develop in the first couple years of a child’s life.

Bella Morton

Bella is pursuing her Master’s degree with the Early Learning Lab. Bella’s project is looking at the early socialisation factors that contribute to the development of children’s sharing, using data from the Sticker Task conducted at the 8-year-old data collection wave of the Growing Up in New Zealand Study. This research will provide novel insights into modifiable experiences that may support prosocial development, such as parent-child shared book reading, screen time usage and community involvement.

Jenna Smith

 Honours Students

Paige George

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.