Dr. Amy Finn, Ph.D.

Expert in cognitive and brain development, Professor at the University of Toronto and Director of the Learning and Development Lab

Research Expertise

Developmental cognitive neuroscience
learning mechanisms
working memory
mechanisms for language acquisition
mechanisms for a

About

Dr. Amy Finn is an Associate Professor in Psychology and director of the Learning and Neural Development lab at the University of Toronto. Dr. Finn received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and completed her postdoctoral training at MIT.  Her research seeks to understand how children perceive, learn and remember differently from—and sometimes better than—adults. She seeks to understand how these developmental tradeoffs emerge from children’s ongoing cognitive and brain development, accrual of world-knowledge, and development of attention and learning systems. To unpack how and why children learn differently, her work crosses several disciplines, using tools from child development, cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience and education.

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Publications

Promise and Paradox
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
2016
Dimensions of childhood adversity have distinct associations with neural systems underlying executive functioning
Development and Psychopathology
2017
Media multitasking in adolescence
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
2016
Neuroanatomical Correlates of the Income-Achievement Gap
Psychological Science
2015
Cognitive Skills, Student Achievement Tests, and Schools
Psychological Science
2014
Longitudinal Evidence for Functional Specialization of the Neural Circuit Supporting Working Memory in the Human Brain
The Journal of Neuroscience
2010
Why High School Grades Are Better Predictors of On-Time College Graduation Than Are Admissions Test Scores: The Roles of Self-Regulation and Cognitive Ability
American Educational Research Journal
2019
The curse of knowledge: First language knowledge impairs adult learners’ use of novel statistics for word segmentation
Cognition
2008
Functional brain organization of working memory in adolescents varies in relation to family income and academic achievement
Developmental Science
2016
A National Survey of Primary Care Practice-Based Research Networks
The Annals of Family Medicine
2007
Developmental dissociation between the maturation of procedural memory and declarative memory
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
2016
Differential effects of socioeconomic status on working and procedural memory systems
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2015
Evidence of stable individual differences in implicit learning
Cognition
2019
When It Hurts (and Helps) to Try: The Role of Effort in Language Learning
PLoS ONE
2014
Associations between cortical thickness and reasoning differ by socioeconomic status in development
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
2019
Children’s family income is associated with cognitive function and volume of anterior not posterior hippocampus
Nature Communications
2020
Structural Connectivity of the Developing Human Amygdala
PLOS ONE
2015
The Sweet Spot: When Children’s Developing Abilities, Brains, and Knowledge Make Them Better Learners Than Adults
Perspectives on Psychological Science
2022
Prefrontal and Hippocampal Structure Predict Statistical Learning Ability in Early Childhood
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
2019
Native-language N400 and P600 predict dissociable language-learning abilities in adults
Neuropsychologia
2017
The Effect of Sonority on Word Segmentation: Evidence for the Use of a Phonological Universal
Cognitive Science
2011
Working memory filtering continues to develop into late adolescence
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
2016
Why segmentation matters: Experience-driven segmentation errors impair “morpheme” learning.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
2015
Learning language with the wrong neural scaffolding: the cost of neural commitment to sounds
Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
2013
A Behind‐the‐Scenes Guide to School‐Based Research
Mind, Brain, and Education
2014
What sticks after statistical learning: The persistence of implicit versus explicit memory traces
Cognition
2023
Changes in statistical learning across development
Nature Reviews Psychology
2023
Errors lead to transient impairments in memory formation
Cognition
2020
Attention Shifts to More Complex Structures With Experience
Psychological Science
2022
Children automatically abstract categorical regularities during statistical learning
Developmental Science
2021
Superior learning in synesthetes: Consistent grapheme-color associations facilitate statistical learning
Cognition
2019
General precedes specific in memory representations for structured experience.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
2022
Pay attention and you might miss it: Greater learning during attentional lapses
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
2022
Reconsidering the Automaticity of Visual Statistical Learning
Unknown Venue
2019
Events structure information accessibility less in children than adults
Cognition
2021
Fluctuations in Sustained Attention Explain Moment-to-Moment Shifts in Children’s Memory Formation
Psychological Science
2023
Neither Enhanced Nor Lost: The Unique Role of Attention in Children's Neural Representations
The Journal of Neuroscience
2023
Memories of structured input become increasingly distorted across development
Child Development
2023
On the automaticity of visual statistical learning
Unknown Venue
2022
Acquisition of the complex three-way Korean plosive contrast by native English speakers
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
2014
Polygenic risk for depression and anterior and posterior hippocampal volume in children and adolescents
Journal of Affective Disorders
2024
Dividing attention hurts learning in adults but not children
Unknown Venue
2022
Neither sharpened nor lost: the unique role of attention in children’s neural representations
Unknown Venue
2022
Attention shifts to more complex locations with experience
Unknown Venue
2021
We don't learn from our mistakes: error-related arousal impairs subsequent memory formation
Journal of Vision
2020
Top-down modulation of visual cortex in the developing human brain
Journal of Vision
2020
Directing Attention Shapes Learning in Adults but Not Children
Psychological Science
2024
Pay attention and you might miss it: Greater learning during attentional lapses
Unknown Venue
2022
Attention to different statistical structures changes over the course of learning
Journal of Vision
2020
Automatic categorical abstraction during visual statistical learning in children and adults
Journal of Vision
2018
Fluctuations in sustained attention explain moment-to-moment shifts in children's memory formation
Unknown Venue
2022
Personalized neural state segmentation: validating the GSBS algorithm for individual-level fMRI data
Unknown Venue
2024
Children's Darting (Not Diffuse) Attentional Spotlight Reduces Memory Selectivity for Relevant Content
Unknown Venue
2024

Education

University of California, Berkeley

Ph.D., cognitive development, learning, neuroscience / May, 2010

Berkeley, California, United States of America

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Postdoctoral Fellow, learning, brain development, cognitive development, cognitive neuroscience

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Experience

University of Toronto

Associate Professor and Director of the Learning and Neural Development Lab / July, 2015Present

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