THEORY OF MIND, TEACHING, & LEARNING From both the teacher's and the learner's perspective, successful pedagogy requires the online tracking of others' knowledge and intentions. How exactly does Theory of Mind, or the ability to reason about others' mental states, relate to children's developing ability to teach and learn from others?
ROTE VS. REFLECTIVE PEDAGOGY Decision-making may be fast, automatic, and rote; or it may be slow, contemplative, and reflective. While this dichotomy has been studied with regard to people’s own cognition, it is unknown whether people can recognize when others’ behavior is driven by rote or reflective decision-making. Understanding this inference is critical in the context of pedagogy: How might these different internal processes influence how people choose to teach, and how could this shape learning? (Check out a quick video overview of these projects here!)
INFORMANT EVALUATIONS Young children's learning crucially depends on being taught by others. However, different teachers may vary drastically in quality: some may be wrong, ignorant, or even intentionally deceptive. How do children identify helpful teachers to ensure accurate learning? And once they have expectations about a teacher's informativeness, how is future learning calibrated to these expectations?
OPEN SCIENCE Open science principles facilitate the creation of high-integrity, reproducible research programs, and I am deeply committed to participating in and promoting open science practices in my field. Check out my profile on OSF to see a collection of my pre-registrations and repositories for past and current research projects.