Mara Breen

Mara Breen is a Professor of Psychology and Education at Mount Holyoke College, where she directs the Cognition, Attention, Perception, and Speech Lab (CAPSlab). Her research focuses on the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying language processing, particularly how musical elements like pitch and rhythm in speech influence comprehension and literacy development.

• Education: Ph.D. in Cognitive Science, MIT; B.A., Hampshire College

Her work integrates cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics to examine implicit prosodic structure during silent reading and its role in literacy. Recent studies include ERP evidence of metric hierarchy and investigations into the speech-to-song illusion.

Grants: NIH R15 grant (2022) for neurocognitive markers of oral fluency in silent reading comprehension.

She teaches courses in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and music cognition, while leading the CAPSlab to explore the intersection of auditory perception and language processing.