We explore how babies and children learn and think about the world. During the first few years of life, children rapidly acquire new abilities that other animals do not, including language, math, episodic memory, and abstract reasoning. The goal of our research is to explore the origins of these abilities, with a particular focus on how learning language facilitates other types of learning.
We are currently running studies for 6 month olds and 2-7 year olds! If you and your child are interested in participating in our ongoing studies, please see the following scheduling page to sign up for an appointment:
If you would like to be contacted when we have studies that are appropriate for your child’s age, please click here.
Here are some of our current research projects:
What are the factors that go into spatial skill development?
Spatial ability in childhood can be a significant predictor of STEM achievement later in life, but what are the factors that contribute to its development? Using eye-tracking and observational methods, this longitudinal study looks at mental rotation ability in infants along with play and book reading activities with parent-child dyads into early childhood. This study is for 12-month-olds and 2- to 4-year-olds.
How do we use space to think about abstract concepts?
Cultural conventions all over the world make use of space to represent time—as in clocks and calendars—and number—as in number lines & meters. How does this tendency develop throughout early childhood? These studies are for 6-month-olds and 4-year-olds.
What can pupil dilation tell us about what people remember?
In this study we are exploring how pupil dilation tracks with memory capacity, and whether we can use pupil dilation as a measure of what people are likely to remember or not remember. This study is currently for adults.
How do children raised in multilingual contexts learn language?
Children who are learning more than one language at a time often mix words from one language with words from another language. This study, currently designed for children, is exploring bilingual children’s language mixing strategies.
How do children generate causal explanations while considering what others know?
The ability to recognize that others might have mental states separate from us, and that these states are not always accurate portrayals of reality, is central for theory of mind. This study explores how children integrate their understanding of causality with their awareness of others’ knowledge states when generating explanations about why things happen. This study is for 4- to 7-year olds.
How do children understand evidential markers and theory of mind?
Evidential markers are linguistic elements that indicate the source of information (e.g., “I saw”, “I heard”), and understanding these markers helps distinguish between direct and indirect sources of evidence. Since people form beliefs based on different sources of evidence, appreciating these markers may help children understand what others know and how they came to know it. How does this relate to the ability to reason about others’ mental states in different contexts?
