About

Maria Mercedes Arredondo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. She completed her PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan and was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia and Haskins Laboratories. Since joining the university in January 2020, she has focused her research on understanding how infants and young children acquire their language(s), with a particular interest in why some children become proficient bilinguals while others struggle. Her research employs methods such as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), standardized assessments, surveys, and qualitative interviews to study the cognitive and neural networks supporting bilingualism and language learning. She is also interested in how children learn and understand their cultures and how these mechanisms influence academic success. Arredondo is committed to supporting undergraduate and graduate research opportunities and is actively involved in advancing diversity and representation in developmental cognitive neuroscience.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Sociology
• Cognitive psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Audiology
• Social psychology
• Cognitive science

Selected publications

• Missing the mix: Perceiving code-switches as a mechanism for bilingual adaptation

  Child Development Perspectives · 2026-01-06

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Code-switching is a common and natural aspect of many bilingual individuals' everyday language use. For many infants growing up in bilingual environments, such language mixing forms may be a regular part of their daily input. However, the frequency and type of code-switching can vary widely by caregivers' language proficiency, context, and social norms. As early as infancy, increased exposure to code-switches in bilingual environments promotes differences in attention at the behavioral, physiological, and neural levels. In this article, we propose that exposure to code-switching may act as a mechanism driving cognitive adaptations in bilingual children's attention, but more evidence is needed on children's exposure to code-switching. Robust measures of bilingual experiences focusing on qualitative and quantitative aspects of code-switching are necessary to deepen our understanding of the variations in bilingual cognitive development.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Role of Dialect, Gender, and Race in Children’s Friendship Choices: Evidence from Mexican Monolinguals and Mexican-American Bilinguals

  Journal of Cognition and Development · 2025-03-02 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  person tasks, when gender and race were held constant) were related to their ability to discriminate between the dialects, but this was not the case for bilinguals. Finally, neither group made use of dialect variety in their social judgments when this factor was pitted against a character's gender or race. Instead, both groups predominantly used gender as a basis for friendship judgments. These results indicate an early sensitivity to linguistic dialect in young children's social judgments, as well as boundary conditions on the use of this information. The findings also reveal differences in children's use of dialect cues as a function of the linguistic and cultural context in which they live in.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Adolescent executive function as a resilience factor in the family stress model among Mexican-origin families.

  Journal of Family Psychology · 2025-08-28

  articleOpen access

  = 5.71) to investigate the mechanism underlying the association between family income and adolescents' likelihood of marijuana use, guided by the family stress model. The protective role of adolescent executive function (shifting task performance and working memory), which has been widely linked to adolescent marijuana use in prior research, was tested as a key resilience factor supporting behavioral regulation and adaptive coping in negative family environments. The results revealed the long-term detrimental influence of early adolescents' family income on the likelihood of using marijuana in late adolescence through family economic pressure, maternal internalizing symptoms, maternal hostility toward partner, and maternal hostility toward adolescent. The downstream link is buffered by adolescents' longer reaction times in shifting tasks and longer digit span by attenuating the influence of maternal hostility toward adolescent on the likelihood of adolescent marijuana use. Revealing the mechanism and identifying resilience factors for the association between family economic hardship and adolescent's marijuana use in Mexican-origin families shed light on the targets of interventions to help adolescents thrive and overcome economic disadvantage in Mexican-origin communities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Daily and ethnic discriminatory experiences and cognitive control in Mexican-origin bilingual language brokers

  International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism · 2024-02-06 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  =334) in order to examine how discriminatory experiences (i.e., daily and ethnic discrimination) and bilingual brokering experiences captured by profiles are related to cognitive control performance (i.e., attentional control and inhibition). We found no significant direct influence of either bilingual broker profiles or discriminatory experiences on cognitive control. However, the associations between discriminatory experiences and cognitive control performance depended upon brokering experiences. Specifically, greater discrimination was associated with lower cognitive control performance among moderate brokers (with moderate bilingual experiences), but the association was attenuated among efficacious brokers (with positive bilingual experiences). Findings highlight the need to consider the sociolinguistic heterogeneity of both discriminatory experiences and language use when investigating cognitive control performance in bilinguals.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Person-specific connectivity mapping uncovers differences of bilingual language experience on brain bases of attention in children

  Brain and Language · 2022 · 18 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Cognitive psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Increasing Diversity in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience: A Roadmap for Increasing Representation in Pediatric Neuroimaging Research

  2022-08-17 · 2 citations

  preprint1st authorCorresponding

  Understanding of human brain development has advanced rapidly as the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience (DCN) has matured into an established scientific discipline. Despite substantial progress, DCN lags behind other related disciplines in terms of diverse representation, standardized reporting requirements for socio-demographic characteristics of participants in pediatric neuroimaging studies, and use of intentional sampling strategies to more accurately represent the socio-demographic, ethnic, and racial composition of the populations from which participants are sampled. Additional efforts are needed to shift DCN towards a more inclusive field that facilitates the study of individual differences across a variety of cultural and contextual experiences. In this commentary, we outline and discuss barriers within our current scientific practice (e.g., research methods) and beliefs (i.e., what constitutes good science, good scientists, and good research questions) that contribute to under-representation and limited diversity within pediatric neuroimaging studies and propose strategies to overcome those barriers. We discuss strategies to address barriers at intrapersonal, interpersonal, community, systemic, and structural levels. Recognition of the value of diversity in DCN research and acknowledgement of the support needed to diversify the field is critical for advancing understanding of neurodevelopment and reducing health disparities and inequities.

  PublisherDOI

• Increasing diversity in developmental cognitive neuroscience: A roadmap for increasing representation in pediatric neuroimaging research

  Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience · 2022 · 60 citations

  • Sociology
  • Psychology
  • Cognitive psychology

  Understanding of human brain development has advanced rapidly as the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience (DCN) has matured into an established scientific discipline. Despite substantial progress, DCN lags behind other related disciplines in terms of diverse representation, standardized reporting requirements for socio-demographic characteristics of participants in pediatric neuroimaging studies, and use of intentional sampling strategies to more accurately represent the socio-demographic, ethnic, and racial composition of the populations from which participants are sampled. Additional efforts are needed to shift DCN towards a more inclusive field that facilitates the study of individual differences across a variety of cultural and contextual experiences. In this commentary, we outline and discuss barriers within our current scientific practice (e.g., research methods) and beliefs (i.e., what constitutes good science, good scientists, and good research questions) that contribute to under-representation and limited diversity within pediatric neuroimaging studies and propose strategies to overcome those barriers. We discuss strategies to address barriers at intrapersonal, interpersonal, community, systemic, and structural levels. Highlighting strength-based models of inclusion and recognition of the value of diversity in DCN research, along with acknowledgement of the support needed to diversify the field is critical for advancing understanding of neurodevelopment and reducing health inequities.

  PublisherDOI

• Attentional orienting abilities in bilinguals: Evidence from a large infant sample

  Infant Behavior and Development · 2022-01-06 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bilingualism alters infants’ cortical organization for attentional orienting mechanisms

  Developmental Science · 2021 · 25 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Cognitive psychology

  A bilingual environment is associated with changes in the brain's structure and function. Some suggest that bilingualism also improves higher-cognitive functions in infants as young as 6-months, yet whether this effect is associated with changes in the infant brain remains unknown. In the present study, we measured brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy in monolingual- and bilingual-raised 6- and 10-month-old infants. Infants completed an orienting attention task, in which a cue was presented prior to an object appearing on the same (Valid) or opposite (Invalid) side of a display. Task performance did not differ between the groups but neural activity did. At 6-months, both groups showed greater activity for Valid (> Invalid) trials in frontal regions (left hemisphere for bilinguals, right hemisphere for monolinguals). At 10-months, bilinguals showed greater activity for Invalid (> Valid) trials in bilateral frontal regions, while monolinguals showed greater brain activity for Valid (> Invalid) trials in left frontal regions. Bilinguals' brain activity trended with their parents' reporting of dual-language mixing when speaking to their child. These findings are the first to indicate how early (dual) language experience can alter the cortical organization underlying broader, non-linguistic cognitive functions during the first year of life.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Role of Audiovisual Speech in Fast-Mapping and Novel Word Retention in Monolingual and Bilingual 24-Month-Olds

  Brain Sciences · 2021-01-16 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access

  Three experiments examined the role of audiovisual speech on 24-month-old monolingual and bilinguals’ performance in a fast-mapping task. In all three experiments, toddlers were exposed to familiar trials which tested their knowledge of known word–referent pairs, disambiguation trials in which novel word–referent pairs were indirectly learned, and retention trials which probed their recognition of the newly-learned word–referent pairs. In Experiment 1 (n = 48), lip movements were present during familiar and disambiguation trials, but not retention trials. In Experiment 2 (n = 48), lip movements were present during all three trial types. In Experiment 3 (bilinguals only, n = 24), a still face with no lip movements was present in all three trial types. While toddlers succeeded in the familiar and disambiguation trials of every experiment, success in the retention trials was only found in Experiment 2. This work suggests that the extra-linguistic support provided by lip movements improved the learning and recognition of the novel words.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Infants' Emerging Functional Specialization in Bilingual Language Acquisition and Attentional Processes

  NSF · $138k · 2018–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Ioulia Kovelman

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  14 shared

• Richard Ν. Aslin

  Yale University

  12 shared

• Teresa Satterfield

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  9 shared

• Xiao‐Su Hu

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  9 shared

• Janet F. Werker

  University of British Columbia

  8 shared

• Minyu Zhang

  7 shared

• Ka I Ip

  University of Minnesota

  6 shared

• Lucy Shih‐Ju Hsu

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  University of Michigan

  2017

Awards & honors

• 2020 SRCD Small Grants for Early Career Scholars. PI. "Bilin…
• 2023 Association for Psychological Science (APS) Rising Star…
• 2023 Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Early…