Research

Children are deeply curious. They are eager to learn not only about the physical world, but also about the social world–––about themselves, others, and social groups. What they learn about themselves and others can have important consequences on their social interactions, academic decisions and outcomes, and even mental health. What are the cognitive processes that support learning about the self and others, and how do they develop early in life?

My research program investigates how human social cognition enables rich, abstract representations of people (including the self) and how these representations impact important behaviors. Much of my work to date has focused on representations of the self: (1) how children reason about what others think of the self, and (2) how they leverage social feedback to learn about the self. Representations of the self are foundational to human social life, as they guide whom we interact with, what we choose to learn, and what we believe we can accomplish. My recent and ongoing work broadens this focus to investigate (3) how children use social information to learn about other individuals and social groups, including stereotypes about them.

My primary methodological approach is to conduct behavioral experiments with children. I also conduct large-scale surveys with adolescents and parents, and use Bayesian computational models to develop formal theories that inform my experiments. My broader goal is to use my work to inform theory-based interventions that promote positive self-representations and social relationships to support learning and academic achievement, especially for children from marginalized backgrounds.