In The News
Undergraduate Researchers Present First‑Author Posters at EPA 2026
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Four undergraduate students from Prof. Karin Stromswold’s Language Acquisition and Processing lab recently traveled to Boston Massachusetts to present their research at the Eastern Psychological Association conference. These young scholars have been conducting research which shows that very early language exposure subtly influences the way adults say and understand different aspects of English including pronouns (Serena Cheenath), wh-questions (Camila Daboin), phrase boundary prosody (Olivia Freudman), and passive sentences (Sourish Vankadari).
Title of talks:
Cheenath, S., Vankadari, S., Knutsen, S., & Stromswold, K. 2026. When Your Second Language Is Your Best Language: Pronoun Comprehension and Production. Eastern Psychological Association. February 28, 2026
Daboin, C., Lutken, CJ., & Stromswold. 2026. How do Native English and Early ESL Speakers Interpret Ambiguous Questions. Eastern Psychological Association. February 28, 2026
Freudman, O., Avagyan, G., Sohn, S., Knutsen, S., & Stromswold, K (2026). Comprehension and Production of Phrase Boundaries: The Impact of Age of Acquisition. Eastern Psychological Association. February 28, 2026
Vankadari, S., Cheenath, S., Knutsen, S., Sohn, S., & Stromswold, K. (2026). Early Acoustic Cues in Active and Passive Sentences based on Language Exposure. Eastern Psychological Association. February 28, 2026
How Gender Bias Influences Math Education
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https://www.rutgers.edu/news/how-gender-bias-influences-math-education
Celebrating Excellence: RuCCS Faculty Win CogSci Mind Challenge
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The Cognitive Science Society has announced the winners of the 2025 Mind Challenge, and we are proud to share that Dr. Ryan Rhodes, Dr. Shannon Bryant, and Dr. Sten Knutsen from the Center for Cognitive Science earned first place in this prestigious competition.
Dr. Rhodes is an Assistant Teaching Professor, Dr. Bryant is a Lecturer, and Dr. Knutsen is a Postdoctoral Associate at RuCCS. Each year, the Mind Challenge invites cognitive scientists to create a five-minute video addressing a key question for a non-expert audience, particularly high school and early college students.
The 2025 question was: “How do different minds (i.e., different groups of humans, animals, artificial systems) learn language, if at all?”
Explore all winning projects on the official website and watch the RuCCS team’s winning entry here.
Rutgers Symposium on Learning IV
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Rutgers Symposium on Learning IV
On Sunday, November 9th, We celebrated the influential career of Dr. Alan Leslie with a star studded lineup of invited speakers across disciplines. Click here for more details: Rutgers Symposium on Learning IV
Tracking Tiny Facial Movements Can Reveal Subtle Emotions in Autistic Individuals
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A Rutgers-led study examines how detecting microscopic facial movements, previously overlooked, are key to enhancing emotional recognition in autistic individuals. A study led by Rutgers University–New Brunswick researchers suggests that tiny facial movements too slight for the human eye to notice – could help scientists better understand social communication in people with autism. Published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, the study found that while individuals with autism express emotions like everyone else, their facial expressions may be too subtle for the human eye to detect. “Autistic individuals use the same basic facial movements to express emotions, but their intensity often falls outside the culturally familiar range that most people recognize,” said Elizabeth Torres, a psychology professor at the Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences. “This disconnect can lead to missed social cues, causing others to overlook or misinterpret their emotions.” 
