"Neuroscience is beautiful and challenging, dynamic and game-changing. I am excited to help you discover how neuroscience can enrich your understanding of yourself and others, and how it can serve as part of your toolkit for creating change."
Gillian Starkey
Associate ProfessorPsychology
Gillian Starkey is an Associate Professor of Human Neuroscience at Goucher College. She completed her doctorate in Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience at Vanderbilt University in 2014, where she was awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Institute of Education Sciences. Before coming to Goucher, Dr. Starkey completed a post-doctoral research fellowship in educational neuroscience at Stanford University, and taught courses in cognitive development, neuroscience, and statistics at Stanford and San José State University. At Goucher, she teaches courses in human neuroscience and conducts electrophysiology research on the neural basis of children’s developing math skills.
Research, Scholarship, Creative Work in Progress
Dr. Starkey’s research investigates the neural correlates of number cognition in adults and children. She is specifically interested in how changes in the structure and function of the brain relate to developments in children’s math ability. The goal of her research is to better understand how the brain supports and reflects developing math skills as children progress through elementary school, with a focus on children who are struggling to learn math.
Publications
Starkey, G. S. (2022). Seminar in Neuroscience: Educational Neuroscience [Syllabus]. Baltimore, MD: Goucher College Center for Psychology.
Starkey, G. S. (2021). A probabilistic method for quantifying children's subitizing span. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 207, 105118.
Starkey, G. S. (2017). Functional magnetic resonance imaging. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Abnormal and Clinical Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Starkey, G. S., & McCandliss, B. D. (2014). The emergence of “groupitizing” in children’s numerical cognition. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 126, 120-137.
Conference Papers & Panel Participation
Starkey, G. S., Grow, C., Livelsberger, F., Bedon, D., & Price, J. (2021). Subitizing small quantities recruits semantic knowledge about numbers. Poster presented at the virtual Eastern Psychological Association conference.
Starkey, G. S., Gyimesi, J., Lerner, H., Mandel, J., & York, K. (2019). Feeling the beat: EEG responses to changes in rhythm and pitch. Poster presented at the Eastern Psychological Association conference in New York, NY.
Gyimesi, J., Young, A.N., & Starkey, G. S. (2018). ERP markers of semantic activation during enumeration are linked to counting ability. Poster presented at the Eastern Psychological Association conference in Philadelphia, PA.
Young, A. N., & Gyimesi, J., Starkey, G. S. (2018). Hemispheric differences in EEG activity during enumeration are related to subitizing ability. Poster presented at the Eastern Psychological Association conference in Philadelphia, PA.
Starkey, G. S., Hubbard, E. M., & McCandliss, B. D. (2013). Linking subitizing fluency with neural systems for exact quantity. Poster presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference in San Francisco, CA.
Starkey, G. S., & McCandliss, B. D. (2012). Measuring children’s grasp of number combining with an exact enumeration task. Poster presented at the American Educational Research Association in Vancouver, BC.
Viarouge, A., Hubbard, E. M., Doydum, A. O., Moneta, L. A., Starkey, G. S., & McCandliss, B. D. (2011). Brain correlates of early math and number skills: Novel insights into K-3 number concepts. Poster presented at the REESE PI Meeting in Washington, DC.
Starkey, G. S., & McCandliss, B. D. (2011). Cognitive relationships between symbolic enumeration and symbolic math fluency. Poster presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference in San Francisco, CA.
Starkey, G. S., Blair, K., Schwartz, D., & McCandliss, B. D. (2010). Non-symbolic enumeration is systematically related to fluency in symbolic arithmetic. Poster presented at the Institute of Education Sciences conference in National Harbor, MD.
Academic or Professional Associations
Cognitive Neuroscience Society
American Education Research Association
Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness
Other Professional or Scholarly Activity
Scientific Advisory Board Member for Lovevery, Inc. (a company that designs neuroscience-informed, Montessori-inspired toys for children ages 0-4)
Editorial experience as an ad hoc reviewer:
Teaching of Psychology
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
Nature: Scientific Reports
Research in Mathematics Education