our team

Lab Members, Spring 2025

From left to right: Kyla Zeldin, Kenan Carter, Dr. Sabrina Perkins, Megan Parks, and Anna Grace Gilbert.

Lab Director

Dr. Sabrina Perkins

Dr. Sabrina Perkins (former last name: Thurman) B.A., University of North Carolina at Greensboro; M.A., University of Tennessee; Ph.D., University of Tennessee) is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at Elon University and Director of the Infant Development Lab. She studies how infants acquire new motor skills, postures, and forms of locomotion, and how infants learn to use their bodies for manipulation and exploration of their environments. She is interested in the role of caregivers in those processes. She also studies the development of reaching, intermanual coordination, and hand preference.

Sabrina’s research has been published in professional academic journals such as Child Development and Developmental Psychology. She has presented her research at multiple professional conferences, including the Society for Research in Child Development and the International Congress of Infant Studies. In her leisure time, Sabrina enjoys gardening and planning her next landscaping/home improvement projects.

Undergraduate Research Students

Anna Grace Gilbert ('27)

Anna Grace is a Psychology major with a minor in Early Childhood Development. She is interested in studying hand preference and walking skills in infancy. In her free time, she enjoys hanging out with friends and reading and is also involved in the theater department here at Elon.

Olivia Guarino ('26)

Olivia is a Psychology major with a double minor in Spanish and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is interested in studying how infants meet motor and cognitive milestones, what influences contribute to the development of these actions, as well as cross-cultural comparisons of child-rearing practices. In her free time, Olivia enjoys volunteering at the local Burlington animal shelter, reading, and baking.

Ella McGlynn ('26)

Ella is a Psychology major with a minor in Neuroscience. She is interested in the motor development of infants and how walking affects planning and problem solving abilities in toy retrieval activities. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, being outside, going on walks, and traveling.

Jessica Garcia-Bastida ('27)

Jessica is an Exercise Science major with a minor in Neuroscience. She is interested in pediatric physical therapy as well as the development of object retrieval in infants. She is a part of the Accelerated Pathways to PT and PA at Elon. She enjoys watching movies and shows with her friends and family, going to the gym, and crafting.

Former Research Students: Kenan Carter ('25), Megan Parks ('25), Kyla Zeldin ('25), Parker Fairfield ('24), Rebecca "Becca" Rose ('23, Elon College Fellow), Tiffany Pham ('23, Provost Scholar), Hannah Higgins ('23), Sofia Cordova ('22), Grace Feiner ('21, Elon College Fellow and Rawls Scholar), Noorhan Abu Khalaf (Alamance-Burlington Early College '21), Alexandra Grillo ('20, Rawls Scholar), Pamela Danko ('20), Regan Fleischer ('20), Dylan Crusan (’20), Elena Cheek (’20), Nicole Karabas (’19), Rayven Young (’19)

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