Yana is a professor and the director of the Department of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Trier. Yana received her PhD in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience from the Humboldt University in Berlin. She did her postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley and at the University of California, Davis. Yana was then a group leader at the Center for Lifespan Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Yana's research focuses on the development of learning, memory, and cognitive control across the lifespan and how motivational and environmental factors influence their developmental trajectories.

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