About
Broadly, my research examines preschool-aged children’s social cognitive development including social learning, trust in testimony, theory of mind, learning through play, and executive functioning. I conduct basic and applied research on these topics. Experimental work of mine examines how the distinct reasons children have to trust others impacts learning from different informational sources (e.g., caregivers, teachers) as well as how technology use during interactions impacts extensions of trust. Applied work of mine leverages what we know about how children learn and what children learn to accomplish two things. First, to evaluate how children’s trust in teachers can support academic and socio-emotional outcomes and second, to promote high quality teacher-child and caregiver-child interactions in formal and informal learning spaces.
My work is published in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as Frontiers in Psychology - Educational Psychology, Early Education and Development, Frontiers in Psychology - Cognitive Psychology, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, PLOSone, and Current Directions in Psychology.