Overview
The focus of our lab work is on on change: how children think about changes in the world surrounding them and how children and adults adapt to changes in their local environment in order to act safely and effectively. Our current areas of interest can be divided into two main categories:
Children’s Reasoning and Conceptual Development
This line of research looks into how children reason about objects and events in the world and how they can differentiate between things that are possible in the real world with those that aren’t. This lead us to examine children’s understanding about magic, fantasy, biological changes such as growth and metamorphosis, and children’s understanding of death.
Children’s and Undergrad’s Reasoning About the Natural World
This line of research aims to understand how children and undergraduates reason about the natural world, such as their understanding of illness and weather. Multiple ongoing studies have the goal of understanding how different belief systems inform how children and undergrads reason about natural phenomena.