Episode 36

The goldilocks of predicability (with Viridiana Benitez)

April 24th, 2026

1 hr 39 mins 44 secs

Your Hosts
Special Guest

About this Episode

This week we had the pleasure of chatting with Dr. Viridiana Benitez, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University. In the first part of the episode we talked with Dr. Benitez about her academic journey along with how she approaches mentorship. In part two, we turned to her recent paper in Current Biology entitled "Predictable Events Enhance Word Learning in Toddlers." This paper explores how environmental predictability can scaffold novel word learning in toddlers. Towards the end, we discuss the relationship between Dr. Benitez's work in predictability and her work in bilingualism.