MAGI Lab Alumni

  • Young man with dark curly hair and glasses wearing a black suit, white shirt, and striped tie, smiling against a plain light background.

    Chad Bolman ('21)

    Chad is a senior at Carthage College majoring in Psychology and Neuroscience. He has completed several research projects, including a study of visual attention in cyber-security for Carthage's Summer Undergraduate Research Experience. Most recently, he has explored the use of machine learning algorithms in the analysis of eye-movement data, in hopes of improving the predictability of search-expertise models. In addition to research, Chad has served as a Research Methods & Statistics tutor for the past two years. In the future, he hopes to bring his experience in statistical analysis and research to the clinical domain of psychology.​

  • A smiling young person with short blonde hair, wearing a red and black checkered shirt, standing outdoors in front of a wooden fence.

    Luke Ehlert ('24)

    Luke is a psychology and neuroscience double major. In the MAGI-Lab, he is involved in research looking at audience members' memories of a magic performance and how their beliefs about the natural world could be impacted by exposure to magic. His thesis work in the MAGI-Lab explores a new technique for measuring susceptibility to the Speech-to-Song Illusion. With his double major he hopes to attend graduate school and earn a Ph.D. in order to pursue a career in music cognition research.

    Luke is now a graduate student in neuroscience at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

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    Tailyn Ludwiczak ('22)

    Tailyn is a Psychology major in her final year at Carthage College. She is dedicated to her research in the MAGI-Lab and is active in multiple research projects. These projects include an in-depth look at the use of humor to generate inattentional blindness and a qualitative research project on the thoughts and opinions of magicians around the country. Tailyn is also working on her Criminal Justice minor and hopes to one day explore the psychological impacts of the criminal justice system.

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    Ashley Lundell ('22)

    As a Psychology major at Carthage College, Ashley has a long-standing interest in attention, pro-social behavior, and conspiracy beliefs. In the MAGI-Lab, she assists with research exploring the relationship between humor and visual attention and research clarifying magicians' attitudes about misdirection. Outside of the MAGI-lab, Ashley primarily researches the help-seeking behavior of individuals with chronic illnesses. Ashley is also a Japanese language minor who hopes to explore the differences between help-seeking attitudes within collectivist and individualist cultures.

  • A smiling woman with brown hair, wearing a white top, standing outdoors near a wooden structure.

    Kaitlyn Richardson ('21)


    Kaitlyn is a psychology major in her final year at Carthage College. She has a lifelong interest in psychology, with specific interests in uncovering mysteries and why people act the way they do. In the MAGI-Lab, she has been pursuing research on self-deception in magicians, with the goal of putting an end to the debate over the existence of self-deception, at least in magicians. She is also a criminal justice minor with a passion for actively shaping the changes in our criminal justice system as a lawyer.

    Kaitlyn subsequently completed a JD degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

    She was a co-author on Tactical blinking in magicians: A tool for self- and other-deception.

  • Jessica Sendef ('21)

    Jessica is a dual major in Psychology and Neuroscience in her last year at Carthage.  She has been active in several labs at Carthage that include research in eye-tracking and attentional guidance, genetic and personality predispositions to developing anxiety and stress disorders, physiological responses to environmental stressors, stressors that come with student-teacher interactions, and responses to digital stressors based on personality.  In the Barnhart lab, she continues to look at attentional guidance through eye-tracking and variables that affect efficiency.  After undergrad, Jessica plans on attending a master’s program in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

  • Sarah Tuchell ('24)

    Sarah is a Psychology and Criminal Justice major. In the MAGI-Lab, she collaborates on research that looks into the validity of graphology through a meta-analytic approach. She is also contributing to a major qualitative study on expert magicians' beliefs about magic and misdirection, in collaboration with Gustav Kuhn and Dan Simons. By pursuing both Psychology and Criminal Justice, Sarah hopes to explore the field of forensic psychology one day. 

    Sarah is now a police officer.

    She was a coauthor on Identifying the boundaries of magic: A qualitative study of expert magicians.