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If you are reading this, you are probably doing so on a device that plays music. You are probably able to hear and understand that music. You probably can also produce music of your own, even if you've never had music lessons. You probably engage with music on a regular basis, regardless of your cultural background, location in the world, or socioeconomic status. You have probably been this way your whole life.
In the Music Lab, we're figuring out why the human mind is designed in such a way that all of the above is true. We do basic cognitive science experiments with many different populations and with people who live all over the world, including in small-scale societies. We also work on large corpus studies of ethnographies and field recordings from the Natural History of Song project, which we host.
The Music Lab is based jointly at the University of Auckland (in New Zealand, as a part of the School of Psychology) and Yale University (in New Haven, as a part of the Yale Child Study Center).
On this site, you can learn more about us and about our work, read our papers, and participate in experiments online!
news
- Our cross-cultural research on infant-directed speech and song was covered on the front page of the New York Times, on the TODAY show, and in many other spots worldwide.
- We've moved — after 5 years at Harvard, we have transitioned our citizen-science platform to Yale University and our brick-and-mortar lab to the University of Auckland (New Zealand).
people
Samuel Mehr
Principal Investigator (website)Courtney Hilton
Postdoc/Research FellowEun Cho
PostdocLogan James
Affiliated PostdocRebecca Evans
Affiliated PostdocMila Bertolo
Graduate StudentJan Simson
Graduate StudentLidya Yurdum
Graduate StudentMarty Snarskis
Graduate studentJuliet Barry
Graduate studentZoé Schelp
Graduate StudentSorour Zekrati
Graduate StudentSam (I-Chieh) Wei
Graduate StudentGage Quigley-Tump
Graduate StudentEstelle Lai
Honours studentYishan Jin
Honours studentLaurence Silk
Undergraduate interncollaborators, past and present
- Quentin Atkinson
University of Auckland - Amy Belfi
Missouri University of Science and Technology - Aaron Benjamin
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Pramit Chaudhuri
University of Texas, Austin - Charlie Chubb
UC Irvine - Joseph Dexter
Harvard University - Joshua Fiechter
Kairos Research - Luke Glowacki
Boston University - Reyna Gordon
Vanderbilt University - Gina Grimshaw
Victoria University of Wellington - David Haig
Harvard University - Gregory Hickok
UC Irvine - Joshua Hartshorne
Boston College - Daniel Ketter
Missouri State University - Dean Knox
University of Pennsylvania - Max Krasnow
Harvard University - Caitlyn Lee
Independent Developer - Christopher Lucas
Washington University in St. Louis - Alia Martin
Victoria University of Wellington - Solena Mednicoff
University of Nevada Las Vegas - Daniel Müllensiefen
Goldsmiths, University of London - Timothy O'Donnell
McGill University - Isabelle Peretz
Université de Montréal - Steven Pinker
Harvard University - Disa Sauter
University of Amsterdam - Adena Schachner
University of California, San Diego - Beau Sievers
Harvard University - Manvir Singh
University of California, Davis - Elizabeth Spelke
Harvard University - Diana Tamir
Princeton University - Sandra Trehub (d. 2023)
University of Toronto, Mississauga - Sebastian Waz
UC Irvine - Ellen Winner
Boston College
We also work with many others on the Natural History of Song project: learn more at themusiclab.org/nhs.
alumni
Ekanem Ebinne
Research Assistant (2022-2023).
Rachel Yan
Affiliated grad student (2020-2022), currently a PhD student in Psychology at the University of Michigan.
Jingxuan Liu
Affiliated grad student (2020-2023), currently a PhD student at Columbia University.
Judy Lee
Research Assistant (2020-2021), currently a PhD student in ethnomusicology at Cambridge University.
Cody Moser
Affiliated grad student (2018-2022), currently a PhD student in Cognitive and Information Sciences the University of California, Merced, working in the Smaldino Lab.
Liam Crowley
Honours student (2019-2021), currently a PhD student in Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington.
Mila Bertolo
Lab manager (2019-2021) and summer intern (2018), currently a PhD student in Neuroscience at McGill University, working in the Sakata Lab
S. Atwood
Lab manager (2018-2019), currently a PhD student in Psychology at the Human Diversity Lab at Princeton University.
Constance Bainbridge
Research Assistant (2018-2020), currently a PhD student in Communication at the University of California, Los Angeles, working with Greg Bryant.
Julie Youngers
Summer intern (2018), currently working in the North Kansas City public schools.
recent papers
join
If you are interested in PhD study in our lab, please contact Dr Mehr at mehr@hey.com with an expression of interest and a CV. We can support PhD applicants at the University of Auckland (in New Zealand) or at Yale, either in Psychology (if working jointly with a Psychology faculty member) or via the Child Study Center. Please note that funding for PhD study is competitive and may not be guaranteed, depending on the particulars of your application.
We are currently recruiting a postdoc to work at our University of Auckland site. More information is at tinyurl.com/musiclab-postdoc.
We do not currently have any open positions for full-time, salaried research assistants, but are able to host part-time RAs working in New Zealand or New Haven. If you are interested in such a position, for hourly pay; or if you would like to apply to work with us for academic credit (at the University of Auckland or at Yale) or work-study (at Yale), please contact us at musiclab@yale.edu. In general, we do not recruit volunteers, with the exception of students who are sponsored by their home institution to do an internship with us.
If you are a member of an underrepresented group in research, and interested in joining us, we can help you get funded with an NIH Diversity Supplement. Please get in touch with Dr Mehr at mehr@hey.com if you are interested in applying.