Dr. Elif Isbell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of California Merced and the director of the IDEA research group. She completed her Ph.D. in Psychology (cognitive neuroscience) at the University of Oregon. Before UC Merced, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oregon and at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She was a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) T32 Postdoctoral Fellow in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan. 

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Amanda Peters, M.A., is a 3rd-year doctoral student in Developmental Psychology. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2021 with a B.S. in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience. Broadly, she is interested in examining the links between socioeconomic status, household characteristics, and cognitive control development in early childhood. 

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Dylan Richardson, M.A., is a 3rd-year doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program. He is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow. He earned a B.A. in Psychological Sciences from UC Merced in 2021. His research interests broadly revolve around how socioeconomic status relates to the development of cognitive control in children. He is especially interested in inhibition and the auditory system, which led him to study auditory selective attention. Along with auditory selective attention, he is interested in how SES might relate to other processes central to the auditory system. 

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Lois Lopez earned a B.A. in psychology from UC Merced in 2024. She is the lab coordinator of the IDEA lab. She is broadly interested in cognitive science and developmental psychology.

Yu Fang Tseng is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Psychology. She is a UC Merced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center (UROC) scholar. She is interested in studying typical and neurodivergent development of cognitive control. She is also interested in cognitive science and clinical psychology.

Lizbeth Arellano Escobar earned a B.A. in psychology from UC Merced in 2023. She is broadly interested in clinical and developmental psychology.