I study cognitive development, children's social cognition, parent-child interaction, and science education.

I study children's cognitive development, particularly causal reasoning, theory of mind, and learning. I am interested in the cognitive mechanisms children use to acquire their commonsense understanding of the world. My lab examines how children acquire causal knowledge and make causal inferences. We also investigate the interaction between intentionality and discovery in causal learning, how children learn from others (often called selective trust or social learning), how children conceptualize pretending, fiction, and fantasy worlds, and how children engage in prosocial behavior. I apply many of these ideas to learning in informal settings, like children's museums. I collaborate with the Providence Children's Museum to investigate and evaluate how learning occurs from interaction with exhibits and through parent-child interaction.

The lab is currently funded by NSF

I teach introductory courses in Development and Cognition. My advanced courses are in Cognitive Development, and links among Cognitive Development and other fields (Cognitive and Social Psychology, Computational Modeling, Philosophy, and Atypical Development)