Language and Cognitive Development Lab

The logo for this site was drawn by my middle-daughter, when she was 4-years old. She showed it to me on that occasion, and I asked her, "what is it?" She replied, "This is a girl, and this [horizontal red] line is her forehead." I followed it up and asked, "What are the red and black blots above her forehead?" To which she responded: "The red one is her happy thoughts; the black one is her dream of a witch." We adults are limited that way: we can't read children's minds even when they are drawn to us. We need labs to figure them out. And our lab is interested in figuring out children's social mind.

We live in a very complex social world. In most countries, people constantly encounter and interact with people from diverse backgrounds, with various values and customs. In order to navigate these environments, we need to make sense of such diversity. In our lab we study how we develop such understanding. In particular, we ask what are the foundational ways in which infants and children conceive of other groups, their values, and their customs? We believe that by understanding the developmental foundations of social-cognition, we can also better devise effective interventions for remedying hazardous social attitudes and beliefs.