Lisa Oakes

Oakes engaging with a subject while eye tracking

Distinguished Professor

232 Center for Mind & Brain

Education

  • Ph.D., Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, 1991
  • B. A., Psychology, The University of California, San Diego, 1985

About

In addition to her academic appointment in the Department of Psychology, Lisa Oakes is a faculty member with the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain. She is currently vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Psychology. She is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Sciences, the Cognitive Development Society, the Cognitive Science Society, the International Congress of Infant Studies, and the Society for Research in Child Development. She is currently president-elect of the International Congress of Infant Studies. She served as an associate editor of the journal Infancy from 2008 to 2013 and currently serves on its editorial board.

Research Focus

Professor Oakes studies the origins and early development of mental abilities in infancy. In general, this work is motivated by the perspective that cognitive abilities work together, and that our understanding of cognitive development in infancy is enriched by studying the interaction of multiple systems. Ongoing research examines the relation between different abilities, including motor, language, and visual abilities, and the development of visual attention across a wide range of contexts.

Lab

Infant Cognition Lab (Oakes)

Recent Representative Publications

  • Oakes, L.M., Hayes, T.R., Klotz, S.M., Pomaranski, K.I., & Henderson, J.M. (2024). The role of local meaning in infants’ fixations of natural scenes. Infancy, 29, 284-298 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-43932-001
  • Beckner, A.G., Arnold, C.D., Bragg, M.G., Caswell, B.L., Chen, Z., Cox, Katherine, DeBolt, M.C., George, M., Maleta, K., Stewart, C., Oakes, L.M., & Prado, E. (2023). Examining Infants’ Visual Paired Comparison Performance in the US and Rural Malawi, Developmental Science, e13439.
  • Beckner, A.G., Simpson, M., Thompkins, D.N., Voss, A.T., Winebrake, D., LoBue, V., Oakes, L.M., & Casasola, M. (2023). A novel approach to assessing infant and child mental rotation. Journal of Intelligence (special issue on Spatial Intelligence and Learning), 11, 168.
  • Beckner, A.G., Voss, A.T., King, K., Phillips, L., Casasola, M., & Oakes, L.M. (2023). An investigation of infant mental rotation using change detection. Infant Behavior and Development, 71, 101834. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2023.101834
  • DeBolt, M.C., Mitsven, S.G., Pomaranski, K.I., Cantrell, L.M., Luck, S.J., & Oakes, L.M. (2023). A new Perspective on the role of physical salience in visual search: Graded effect of salience on infants’ attention. Developmental Psychology, 59, 326-343. DOI:10.1037/dev0001460
  • DeBolt, M.C., & Oakes, L.M. (2023). The impact of face masks on infants’ attention to and learning of faces: An eye tracking study. Infancy, 28, 71-92. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12516.
  • Oakes, L. M. (2023). The cascading development of visual attention in infancy: Learning to look and looking to learn. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 32, 410-417. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214231178
  • Singh, L., Cristia, A., Karasik, L.B., Rajendra, S.J., & Oakes, L.M., (2023). Diversity and Representation in Infant Research: Barriers and bridges towards a globalized science of infant development. Infancy, 28, 708-737.https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12545
  • Kiat, J.E., Luck, S.J, Beckner, A.G., Hayes, T.R., Pomaranski, K.I., Henderson, J.M., & Oakes, L.M. (2021).Linking patterns of infant eye movements to a neural network model of the ventral stream using representational similarity analysis. Developmental Science, e13155. Repository: https://osf.io/ehg82/
  • Nelson, C.M., & Oakes, L.M. (2021). “May I Grab Your Attention?”: An investigation into infants' visual preferences for handled objects using Lookit as an online platform for data collection. Frontiers in Psychology, section Developmental Psychology, 12:733218. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733218
  • Pomaranski, K. I., Hayes, T. R., Kwon, M.-K., Henderson, J. M., & Oakes, L. M. (2021). Developmental changes in natural scene viewing in infancy. Developmental Psychology, 57(7), 1025–1041. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001020Repositories: https://osf.io/5j4ht/ and https://nyu.databrary.org/volume/1131

Teaching

Professor Oakes teaches in the area of Developmental Psychology.

Awards

Professor Oakes received a UC Davis Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Award, the UCDavis Chancellors Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research, the Eleanor Maccoby Book Award in Developmental Psychology, a UC Davis Psychology Department Teaching Award, and has been selected as a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science.

Documents