Shannon M Klotz, M.A.

Education

• B.A., Neuroscience, Scripps College, 2019
• M.A., Psychology, University of California, Davis, 2025

About

Shannon (smklotz@ucdavis.edu) is currently a 5th year Ph.D. student in Developmental Psychology working with Dr. Lisa Oakes, where she explores infant cognition using behavioral and computational methods. Earning her B.A. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Scripps College in May 2019, she is proud to be a first-generation college graduate originally from Sacramento. During her undergraduate studies, Shannon was a member of Dr. Michael Spezio's Laboratory for Inquiry into Valuation and Emotion (LIVE Lab) for three years, focusing on Theory of Mind using EEG and investigating how individuals use mental representations in social interactions. As the Assistant Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) of the ASPIRE Program (Accelerating Success by Providing Intensive Research Experience), she combines her passions for fostering diverse lived experiences and perspectives in research and supporting early undergraduate endeavors in mind and brain sciences.

Research Focus

Shannon's research aims to provide a holistic understanding of how infants perceive and interact with their world by bridging the disciplines of developmental psychology and computer vision. Her work delves into the evolution of infant attention, investigating the transition from preferences for low-level visual features like physical saliency to more informative and abstract content. This exploration is further enriched by the use of deep neural network (DNN) models based on the architecture of the ventral stream object recognition pathway, allowing her to extract computational insights from eye-tracking data. Within this integrated framework, she examines how developmental cascades connect various aspects of infant development, shedding light on how daily experiences and environmental interactions shape infants' perceptual and cognitive growth.

Publications

Klotz, S. M., Kiat, J. E., Oakes, L. M., Luck, S. J. (under review). Using a computational model to predict the development of young children’s looking times to complex scenes.

Hunter, B. K., Kızıldere, E., Klotz, S. M., Nelson, C. M., Markant, J., & Oakes, L. M. (2025). What have we learned about infant visual attention in the first 25 years of the 21st century? Infant Behavior and Development, 81, 102135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102135

Hunter, B. K., Kiat, J. E., Klotz, S. M., Nelson, C. M., Luck, S. J., & Oakes, L. M. (2025). The predictive ability of GBVS feature channels on infants’ fixations of natural scenes. Visual Cognition, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2025.2468690

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(2), 284–298. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12582

Teaching

Associate Instructor (Instructor of Record)

PSC 143 Infant Development (Fall 2025)

PSC 140V Developmental Psychology (Summer 2025)

PSC 143 Infant Development (Spring 2025)

Guest Lecturer

PSC 143 Infant Development (Fall 2023, Winter 2025)

Teaching Assistant

PSC 140 Developmental Psychology (Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Summer 2024)

PSC 143 Infant Development (Winter 2023, Fall 2023, Winter 2025)

Awards

2025 Professors for the Future Fellow

2025, 2023 Dukes Travel Award

2024 Scholarship of Teaching & Learning Conference Faculty / Staff Choice Award

2022 Graduate Student Association's Travel Award

2022 UC Davis Psychology Outstanding Mentorship Award

2018 Claremont Colleges' Intercollegiate Neuroscience Summer Fellowship

2015 -2019 Scripps College Presidential Scholarship