Curiosity at a young age.
Psychology: How and why do decision-making strategies change across the lifespan?
My mother encouraged my innate curiosity from childhood, telling me I was a born scientist. I was always asking “why?”. I wondered why people act differently and developed a keen interest in understanding human behavior. Over time, this curiosity led me to consider medicine, neurology, and ultimately, psychology. During my master's degree, I examined learning in infants, which grew into a desire to study the neural processes supporting learning and decision-making from childhood to old age. As I started a PhD studying decision-making across the lifespan, it became clear that better understanding how we make decisions can help child development as well as support our aging population. What are the neural mechanisms that support our everyday choices? How and why do these mechanisms change as we age, and can we enhance these processes to help human development?