She completed her PhD at Stanford University in 1993. O'Neill has published and co-published numerous journal articles, such as "The emergence of the ability to track a character's mental perspective in narrative" (2007); "The Language Use Inventory for Young Children" (2007); and "The emergence of episodic future thinking in humans" (2005). She has given a number of invited conference presentations on various topics, including Small talk and stories: children's developing models of self and other (May 2004) and Talking about "new" information: Why theory mind matters to language development (April 2002). Website