cogsci phd student at brown university
nsf graduate research fellow

My name is Laila Johnston (she/her). I am a Cognitive Science PhD Student at Brown University advised by Roman Feiman and Ellie Pavlick. I received my B.S. in Mathematics with minors in Computer Science and Philosophy from the University of Central Florida.

Before starting my PhD, I worked in the CoCoSci Group at MIT with Max Siegel, Josh Tenenbaum, and Tobi Gerstenberg researching conceptual reasoning within probabilistic programs and large language models, in the domain of tug-of-war games. Before that, I worked with David Danks researching individual differences in causal learning and building models of causal inference learning (see our cogsci paper!).

My research focuses on the computational mechanisms of how humans use ad-hoc contextual information to determine what is revelant (i.e. the frame problem). Currently, I am researching how people generate linguistic alternatives and what computational process can explain which alternatives enrich the meaning of an utterance. I am also very interested in the mechanisms of human question asking. How can we create models that form questions as flexibly and easily as humans do? Can questions provide insights into how humans change their world models? (see my NSF GRFP research proposal for more details).

On my free time, I enjoy playing beach tennis (I won 2 medals at the IFBT 2025 World Championships), dancing salsa, bachata, and merengue, hiking/backpacking, film photography, and going to jazz concerts. I also enjoy spending too much money on vinyl (see my collection) and buying more books than I could ever read.