Dr. Coley is Professor of Psychology and Professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences at Northeastern University, and Director of the CORE Lab. He is interested in the basic cognitive processes underlying how people organize and use their knowledge of the world, how those processes develop and change over time, and how differences in culture and experience lead to differences in the organization and use of knowledge. He is also committed to cross-disciplinary translational research, and to exploring the concrete consequences of conceptual organization and reasoning in areas like science education, social conflict, and ecological awareness. Dr. Coley sees his lab as an environment in which smart, motivated, people have the opportunity to work together while learning about research, exploring these issues in lots of different ways, making genuine contributions to cognitive science, and having fun along the way.

Catie is a sixth-year doctoral student focusing on human-centered thinking and science learning. In particular, she is interested in how our intuitive ideas about humans color the way that we learn about and care for the more-than-human world. She is also fascinated by how our human-centric biases impact how we think about neuroscience and the relationship between mind and brain across species. Catie has a passion for teaching, mentoring over 70 undergraduate research assistants over the past 4+ years and teaching research methods courses for two summers. She joined the CORE lab in 2020, after completing her Master’s at Northeastern studying emotion and physiology, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Brigham Young University.

Favorite Secondary Character: Luna Lovegood (Harry Potter)

Emma is a fourth-year doctoral student in the CORE lab. Her research interests broadly include the ways that people conceptualize and interact with social groups, and the factors that shape social reasoning. She is also interested in how humans relate to the world around them, including how humans relate to nature and non-human animals. When Emma is not in the lab, she is either skiing or wishing she was skiing.

Favorite Secondary Character: Elizabeth Swann (Pirates of the Caribbean franchise)

After graduating from Tufts University, Joan spent some time at a cardiovascular imaging lab before transitioning back to psychology with the CORE Lab. She is currently interested in how people think about the natural world/systems and climate change. Her hope is that she can develop interventions in fighting climate change by encouraging people to think about themselves as part of the natural world and rethinking the psychological distance between the self and climate change disasters. In her free time, she likes to bake and dance.

Favorite Secondary Character: Troy (Community)

Krissy is a first year doctoral student in the CORE lab. She is interested in a cross-cultural, situative perspective on cognition, meaning that rather than privileging western perspectives as human universals, her research seeks to explore the diversity of human sense making in its relational, interdependent, sociocultural context. Her interest is in applying this perspective to intuitive theories of agent-environment and mind-body relations, and how humans conceptualize and model themselves in the broader web of the natural world. In her free time, she likes to take long, meandering walks and have equally long and meandering conversations.

Favorite Childhood Book: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

After graduating from Northeastern in May 2022 with a Bachelor of Science in Health Science, Kyleigh made the decision to return back to the CORE Lab as Lab Manager in January 2023. Kyleigh has been both a Research Assistant and Co-op Research Coordinator in the CORE Lab throughout her time at Northeastern. Kyleigh is interested in how science/health information is communicated and what types of communication help or hurt people’s understanding of that information.

Favorite Childhood Book: The Mysterious Benedict Society

Research Interests: education, educational psychology, child& adolescent development, mental health. (maybe more detailed in the future)

Favorite Childhood Book: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger

Research Interests: Ecological cognition and the use of interactive media in conservation science

Favorite Childhood Book: The Golden Compass