Research

Our lab studies a variety of research topics and questions, including:

Social Development
How do babies pay attention to faces? How do children differentiate emotions?
Numerical Development
How do children learn how to count? Can babies tell the difference between 4 and 6 dots?
Memory Development
How long can a baby remember a new face? Can children remember a new skill learned two weeks before?

Eye-tracker

Many of our studies involve presenting children with a brief set of pictures on a computer monitor and using a special camera to see where they are looking and how they are responding to these pictures.

A 2-year-old participant looking at pictures of faces for a study at the Cognitive Development Lab at CSI

In one of our studies, we might show your child pictures of faces expressing different emotional expressions (e.g., happy, fearful, neutral, surprised) to ask questions like 'do kids spend more time on happy faces than fearful faces?' or 'do kids look longer at the mouth for happy faces and the eyes for fearful faces?'

A typical visit to the lab takes less than an hour, and you will be with your child at all times. After you arrive to campus, we will meet you at the Psychology Department parking lot (directions) and bring you to our lab, where you and your child can get settled in our waiting room. We will talk to you about the study and answer any questions you may have, and then we will go through some paperwork, including the consent form. After this, our researchers will start the study, continuing only as long as you and your child are interested. If you have additional children that you would like to bring to the visit, we can provide sibsitting during the study. At the end of the study, your child will receive a thank-you gift for their participation.

To hear more about our studies and/or participate, sign up here.