Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Psychology, University of Auckland, 2021
  • B.A., Psychology, Pacific Lutheran University, 2017
Academic Appointments
  • Graduate Teaching Assistant, Psychology, The University of Auckland, 2018 - 2021
Professional Honors
  • University of Auckland Doctoral Academic Scholarship, 2017 – 2021
  • Pacific Lutheran University Academic Scholarship, 2014 – 2017
  • Psi Chi International Honor Society in Psychology, 2016 - Present

Dr. Nichole Breeland is a developmental psychologist with expertise in human social cognition and lifespan development. She utilizes her diverse knowledge of attention, memory, and social psychological theory to examine human factors across several domains, such as virtual reality product use, child safety, and other aspects of user experience. 

Dr. Breeland has extensive experience in designing and conducting large-scale longitudinal research with adult and child participants, including performing international research. She utilizes diverse data collection approaches, such as eye-tracking, behavioral observation, surveys, and qualitative interviews alongside sophisticated statistical approaches, such as Bayesian inference, dyadic modeling, and structural equation modeling to gain nuanced insights into human behavior. Dr. Breeland's social-cognitive theoretical approach and extensive research experience allows her to provide unique solutions to clients' most complex user research questions.

Dr. Breeland completed her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Her graduate research examined the factors that predict children's ability to mentally represent shared goals and attain shared goals (i.e., cooperate) with others. Her research also focused on identifying a "cooperative phenotype" that examined the relationships between children's social-cognitive abilities (e.g., intention understanding, attention capacity, and person perception) and their cooperative behaviors. Dr. Breeland has also contributed to studies investigating the links between parent and child prosocial behaviors and children's trust in expert testimony.