She received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from Purdue University (1988). Her research primarily concerns the development of children’s attention and problem solving in the context of informal and formal digital learning settings which has been funded through the Spencer Foundation and the National Science Foundation. She is an affiliated faculty member of the Children’s Digital Media Center at Georgetown University. She and Shalom M. Fisch co-edited the 2013 volume of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development: Digital Games as a Context for Cognitive Development and Learning. She is single editor of Learning by Playing: Video Gaming in Education (Oxford University Press, 2014) and co-editor with Mark Blades, Caroline Oates and Barrie Gunter of Advertising to Children. New Directions, New Media (Palgrave, 2014).