About

Ellis Cain

ecain@ucmerced.edu

Academic bio

I am a PhD Candidate in the Cognitive and Informational Sciences program at UC Merced. My research explores how individual linguistic development (i.e., across the whole lifespan) and group-level cultural evolution mutually shape and constrain one another, giving rise to the structure of language. In the long run, I aim to provide both a mechanistic account of how linguistic processing & production change across the lifespan, and quantify its relation to historical changes in language by integrating computational, behavioral, and neural approaches. I also study the relationship between cultural context and transmission pressures in the context of cultural evolution.

Currently, I work in Rachel Ryskin’s Language, Interaction, and Cognition Lab and collaborate with various professors at UC Merced. Previously, I worked with Chen Yu on verb-specific statistical learning and the ecological validity of cross-situational learning.