I received a B.A. in cognitive science in 2001 from Rice University. My main interests are in reading ability and vocabulary representation in the brain. To that end, I am looking at the extent to which various kinds of knowledge about words contributes to comprehension ability, and subsequently, how comprehension ability is related to the kind and quality of information gleaned from encounters with new words. I am also interested in eye-movement control during reading, and how components of word knowledge contribute differentially to determining where and when the eyes move during reading. Besides using behavioral and eye-tracking techniques to answer questions about word knowledge, I am currently using fMRI to look at visual word recognition in both English and Chinese (which have very different writing systems), and to see how sensitivity to the visual form of words develops over time when learning a new writing system.