Hi, I’m Mert!
I’m a Psychology Ph.D. candidate in the Cognitive Development Lab at New York University. My research explores the role of children’s actions and parent-child interactions in language development, as well as how language shapes the mind, particularly its role in reasoning and making sense of the world. I also study how children and adults use language to understand their world; specifically, how they generate explanations and the cognitive processes that support this ability. I extend this framework into artificial intelligence by studying the reasoning processes within Large Language Models (LLMs) and in interactions between LLMs and humans, aiming to understand their capabilities and limitations as cognitive agents.
Starting in 2026, I will join Rutgers University as a postdoctoral researcher.
I hold a Bachelor of Arts in Educational Sciences from Boğaziçi University and a Master of Arts in Psychology from Koç University.