I am interested in understanding the mechanisms of human learning, memory, and categorization so that we may model how people represent knowledge, with two linked goals: 1) I am interested in understanding how people learn about and (mis)represent the world, so that 2) we learn to create machines with intelligence more like our own. Because I am interested in cross-cutting areas that are often studied separately, my work falls in the various subareas of categorical perception, semantic models, associative learning, language learning, memory, and decision-making. My dissertation focused on the problem of language acquisition: how do learning and memory mechanisms allow us to bootstrap meaning from the statistics of our language environment? Recently, I have been eagerly applying cognitive psychology knowledge and models to create adaptive educational software, which I am excited to use as a research platform for active, self-directed learning--even as it is used to improve literacy and numeracy! Check out an introduction to egoTeach.