Infant probability
Infants are incredibly gifted learners and the first few months of their mental lives are largely dedicated to solving the important puzzle of how their world is organized. One of the ways that infants can organize their world is through mechanisms that allow them to track statistical patterns in the environment. By 6-months, infants have a basic understanding of probability. If an infant is shown a box with mostly red balls and a few white, infants will look longer when an experimenter removes only white balls from this box. We are investigating how infants use this understanding of probability to make decisions about social interactions, physical objects, psychological knowledge, and to guide their own actions. In our studies, we track how long infants look at certain events, either with a live experimenter or a video. We also track to see if infants prefer to crawl or reach towards an object.
Judgement and decision-making
In this line of work, we explore how children make decisions based on multiple pieces of information. From an early age, children use probabilistic information in their decisions. That is, if a child is shown a population that contains mostly red objects and some white objects, they understand that a random sample from that population should mostly contain red objects. Surprisingly, research has shown that adults tend to underuse numerical information when it conflicts with other pieces of information that they are given. For instance, adults are told a personality description is taken from a sample of 70 lawyers and 30 engineers. If adults are told this person enjoys math puzzles and carpentry, they will classify this individual as an engineer even though there are more lawyers in the sample. We are investigating the origins of these types of errors based on social information. In our studies, we ask children very simple questions about story characters to see which information (numerical or social) they consider when solving these problems.
Social cognition
As social beings, we spend a considerable amount of time interacting with other people. In order to successfully communicate and interact with others, we need to be able to understand and predict people’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. This ability is especially important for infants and young children as their early years is when they first begin to form meaningful relationships. In our lab, we are interested in children’s social cognitive development. We explore when and how children use probability to infer other people’s emotions, and whether infants can use people’s emotions to predict their subsequent actions. We are also interested in children’s understanding of preferences and the experiences infants need in order to learn that preferences are subjective. The research we conduct in our lab will give us a better understanding of children’s knowledge of the social world.
Learning in a museum setting
Museums provide informal opportunities for children to learn about different subjects through conversation and play. Past research has shown that children’s learning is enhanced when they interact with people and their environment. For instance, adults help to break down complex concepts, relate new material to children’s past experiences, and identify gaps in their knowledge. Meanwhile, when children engage in hands-on play they not only enjoy the experience, but gain in-depth knowledge about the topic simultaneously. Our current research looks at how children learn while they explore a local museum.